The aurora was very spectacular last night and there were some aspects that I hadn’t seen before. The most notable was right at the start when in fact I hadn’t been aware that an aurora was happening. I poked my head out to look at the sky about 21:15 UT to see if it was clear when I noticed that there was some puffy light cloud that was being lit up as if by a search light. It was so bright that I was convinced I was seeing something like the forward landing lights of an aircraft or perhaps something weird like a rocket fuel dump. Or, I thought, it might be the moon shining through a gap in the clouds. It gave me goosebumps because I just couldn’t explain it. The colour was sort of white to my eyes. It faded slowly over a minute or so and then grew brighter again a bit further south. It wasn’t until I went inside and saw the aurora alert that I reasoned what I saw was part of a very bright aurora.
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