Northern Lights or City Lights?

One night last month Bill got an email from his mom (Hi, Bev!) saying that the Northern Lights may be visible as far south as London that night due to a solar flare. Since it was already 10PM, Bill and I were already in our PJs and getting ready for bed. One of the things on Bill's bucket list is to see the Northern Lights with his own eyeballs, so we decided to seize the potential opportunity. 

We put on some street clothes and hit the road! We drove north, heading towards dark skies with good vantage points of the horizon. After a while I started seeing some light in the distance, but couldn't tell if it was reflections from city lights, or something way more cool. We kept driving, all in all we drove for about an hour on little, dark, twisty British roads until we found a nice pull-out overlooking the mysterious lights I noticed from afar. 

Northern Lights?

Or City Lights?

We took these photos at 11:30PM, looking out towards the Northwest coast of England. Bill and I eventually decided these are simply city lights, but we still aren't sure what city we were viewing. We were corroborated by a radio article I heard the next day saying that the Northern Lights were only somewhat visible from 12:30 − 2:00AM up around the Newcastle area. We weren't out that late or that far north, so a city it must have been.  

Stars!

We did get a chance to practice some night-time photography, something neither of us have really ever done before. Bill's camera took some great photos, so I'm hoping he'll have time to write up his own blog post on this event in the near future. 

Moon Through Trees

Someday, we'll see the Northern Lights. And I'm sure when we see them, we will know instantly... Yup! That's them! :-)