Exciting night treats as aurora shows off

Country Living with Francis Farragher

There was a time in my cycle of life when there was a strong possibility of witnessing an array of celestial sights as nights out drifted into early morning meanderings under clearing skies, but alas there’s only so long that such abuses can be afflicted on the human mind and body.

Now there’s more a likelihood of spotting heavenly high jinks in early morning rambles through the fields when throwing an eye on a bovine with high expectations of increasing the herd size.

So over recent times, blood moons, shimmering aurora borealis displays and meteor showers have tended to be things locked away in the night skies as I dream of being that young boy again, skipping through meadows and hopping over walls, with not even the merest creak from a knee or an ankle joint.

There is of course the easy option of just glancing through the computer the morning after such sights, but in truth such viewings are far removed from witnessing the treats of nature and our skies at first hand. The aurora surely has to be the greatest light show on earth.

The absence of the visible moon from our skies; the quick early evening exit of the sun from the heavens in October and the spell of clear fine weather of recent days has made for perfect viewing conditions of the celestial treats on offer.

After from that, the main distraction to eliminate from the enjoyment of those experiences is to view the skies as far away as possible from any of the artificial light sources in the areas such as the street lights of cities or towns.

So what causes the aurora borealis or northern lights? Like everything else on earth, it all goes back to the sun, that shining star of 93 million miles away. When the sun, every now and then, decides to get a bit giddy, millions of high energy particles are sent hurtling across space.

They are drawn to the more magnetised North Pole and South Pole (aurora australis or southern lights) regions of the earth, where they send the atoms and molecules of our atmosphere into a riot of activity. When the oxygen and nitrogen atoms heat up and cool down, they emit the most beautiful if ghostly strands of light, normally only seen in the higher latitudes of Scotland or Scandinavia.

However over recent days, we’ve seen pictures of the aurora from over Lough Corrib and naturally enough some spectacular ones from northern Donegal but greenish skies were also spotted as far south as Tipperary and Kerry.

Regardless of latitude or location, meteor showers that we also got a dash of last week too, can be seen from anywhere as long as we get a clear sky and again the absence of a moon helps to add greatly to the brightness of the meteor splinters.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.