The Sky at Night presenter is blown away by her first aurora – much like the particles that cause them.
The past few years I have spent working on The Sky at Night have been a privilege and it has led to some incredible opportunities: reporting on the descent of the Philae lander onto Comet 67P; being present at NASA as New Horizons flew past Pluto, and discussing some of the first images that the probe returned; and, this year, I was able to fulfil a childhood dream of seeing the Northern Lights.
We looked into a number of options to hunt down the aurora borealis. They can be seen from northern Scotland, but the probability of seeing them so far south is low. Flying north from Leeds on a dedicated ‘aurora flight’ was also considered, but in the end we settled on a visit to Tromsø, a Norwegian town high in the Arctic Circle amongst the fjords. With an 80 per cent chance of seeing the Northern Lights from there, it was definitely our best shot.
This story is from the January 2018 edition of BBC Sky at Night Magazine.
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This story is from the January 2018 edition of BBC Sky at Night Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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