On the night of 10th october, I had one of the most memorable and “wished-for” experiences of my life. Aurora borealis, or the “Northern Lights”, was one of the things on my bucket list. As part of a very rare occurrence, a solar storm happened this week. The solar storm triggered the display of the northern lights in areas in the low-latitude regions. People across England and Ireland reported sightings of the lights.
However, I could have missed the sight. It was a busy day at work, and I didn’t get a chance to check Twitter, Reddit, or any other news app the whole day. So, I had no idea that the solar storm was predicted and that there was a chance to see the northern lights in Ireland. I am still surprised how I missed the news.
Anyway, it was almost 11 PM and I was reading something while Ritu was talking to her friend. After her call, she showed me that people had posted stories about northern lights. I was intrigued and went outside to check the sky. There was nothing out there. I thought we missed it this time as well. Northern lights were seen in Ireland in May as well, but we were in India at that time and couldn’t witness the magic. So, I was kind of disappointed that I missed it this time too. However, just 2-3 minutes later, my friend Kashish called and said that the aurora was visible, Wanna go somewhere towards the outskirts of the city to see it? I was like if it’s still visible, then hell yeah.
We got a car and decided to go towards Swords or Balbriggan, areas on the northern outskirts of Dublin. However, there were a lot of lights on the roads and we couldn’t see anything until we were about to reach Swords. At that time, I was looking for areas with fewer establishments in Google Maps and thought of trying Donabate, the small coastal town with a beach east of Swords. The Aurora alerts app did have some pins about the sights of Aurora in that area. Hence, we decided to give it a shot.
While riding in the car, my eyes were either glued to the sky or my phone to check for any updates. The funny part, I was getting tricked by the glare of traffic lights on the road on the window glass. Many times, it would look like the color of the sky was green, but then I would find that it was because of the glare coming off the green traffic light that we were approaching on the road.
A few moments later after we turned our car towards Donabate, the sky again seemed a little reddish. This time there were not many street lights or traffic lights on the road that we were going on. I decided to take a clearer look and lowered the window glass to check it out. There it was. It looked like a magical beam of light coming from space that had different colors. All of us were ecstatic at that moment. The impulsive decision of roaming at night chasing northern lights had paid off.
We were looking for a good spot to stop the car and witness more of this wonderful natural phenomenon but didn’t find anything before we reached the Donabate beach. As we reached the parking of the beach and got out of the car, we saw a man walking towards the beach with a camera and tripod in his hands. We tagged along with him and went towards a spot where the lights or the glare coming off from the street lights in the parking lot and a hotel nearby wouldn’t affect our experience.
As we reached the spot, the sight in front of us was truly magical. It looked like someone had painted the sky in front of us with bright colors. There were strokes of the brush in different colors with red, pink and purple shades dominating most of it. The green color complimented those shades beautifully.
We didn’t have any cameras or professional equipment to take good photographs. So, we just relied on the manual night mode of our phones but still managed to capture some good photos. But more than that, it was our eyes mesmerized by the picture that we had in front of us. I could watch the slowly changing colors in the sky for hours. It was the time to absorb as much as you could and appreciate the beauty of it.
These kinds of experiences make you realize the sheer beauty and wonder of nature. It’s moments like these that remind us of how incredible our planet is and how fortunate we are to witness such breathtaking phenomena. It’s a memory that I will cherish forever. And the desire to experience the northern lights in their full glory in the Scandinavian countries has grown even further now. I hope to tick that one thing from the bucket list soon.
