Years ago we traipsed to the Arctic Circle in hopes of chasing the Northern Lights, never ever thinking that one evening we’d be watching the Northern Lights in London, shimmering over our very own garden.
Yes, you read that correctly. The aurora borealis, aka the Northern Lights shimmered over our London home in May 2024.
It was around 11, 11.30 pm and we were just settling in for the night, phones in hand as we read educational literature scrolled Instagram, and Mr Kiwi turns to me to exclaiming “there might be Aurora Borealis over London tonight! As in, now!” I laughed, thinking he was crazy, but he showed me a BBC article, and I jumped out of bed.
Knowing from our Norwegian experience that the best way to view them is through a lens I grabbed my phone and camera – cameras and the human eye see auroras differently. That doesn’t mean the camera is distorting the moment. Sometimes the photographer is distorting things with the saturation slider, but the camera is just doing what the camera does. It’s collecting light as best it can and rendering that into an image. These photos are straight out of my phone, no editing at all.
The aurora sits 100s of km up in the sky above the height of the clouds, so you need cloud-free skies. The sky also needs to be dark. Get away from streetlights. A bright full moon will also wash out the light from faint aurora.
Smidgen joined us, though completely nonplussed (non-pussed?) about it, no doubt confused as to why we weren’t warming the bed for her…
The Northern Lights could be seen right across the UK thanks to one of the strongest geomagnetic storms in years. It was the most extreme geomagnetic storm in two decades, making the natural light show visible much further south than usual.
Aurora displays occur when charged particles collide with gases in the Earth’s atmosphere around the magnetic poles. According to all the articles I read, the sun is currently in the most active period of its 11-year cycle.
An hour or so later (cue much excited dashing in and out of the house to switch cameras back and forth, playing with settings – in my hands my at the time of writing latest model iPhone took the best photos).
I still can’t quite believe that we saw the Northern Lights in London, shimmering over our very own garden whilst we were in our Pyjamas. What an experience (put to music over on Instagram of course…!