THE DANCING LIGHTS

Nature is strange, mysterious and flighty, and it regularly leaves us surprised at the illogical signs of its force. In spite of the fact that you think moving rocks and blood-shaded downpour is a type of joke or wonderful event, science has an elucidation for almost everything. What is the one word that rings a bell when you hear the word light? For me, its sunlight. For you, it could be flashlight and for someone else, it could be a word as peaceful as the moonlight. Personally, I love fairy lights and that too the yellow ones. Talking about yellow, recently I have realized, literally everything in my room is yellow. Not that its awful or something. I mean, after all, yellow is the liveliest color of the rainbow. I also love the color green, may be because it is such a calm color and it often represents growth, peace, harmony and gives us a feeling of serenity. But my favorite color is red. In short, I am in love with colors.

Have you heard of the popular Aurora borealis or sometimes alluded to as the Northern lights? Aurora Borealis offer a spellbinding, emotional, otherworldly presentation that intrigues all who see it. The tones regularly connected with the aurora borealis are pink, green, yellow, blue, violet, and infrequently orange and white. Regularly, when the particles crash into oxygen, yellow and green are created. Connections with nitrogen produce red, violet, and incidentally blue tones. It just amazes me the way this Northern lights work. I have also read that the type of collisions and the altitude also makes a difference to the colors that appear in the sky. These lights may show as a static band of light, or, when the sunlight based flares are especially solid, it appears as a moving drape of ever-changing color. Imagine looking up at green, red and purple lights glimmering across the sky. Dazzling, without a doubt!

If you are wondering when and where to see this intricate work of nature, the best places to see Aurora Borealis are Alaska and northern Canada, however visiting these tremendous, open spans isn't very simple as it seems. Aurora Borealis are consistently present throughout the year, yet winter is typically the best, an ideal time to see them, because of lower levels of light contamination and the unmistakable, fresh air. September, October, March and April are probably the greatest months to see the Aurora borealis. The lights are known to be more splendid and more dynamic for as long as two days after sunspot action is at its most elevated state.

It's no big surprise the aurora borealis have led to the creation of many fables and stories through the ages. In Icelandic legends, they acknowledged that the Northern Lights helped with delivering of young ones, however, pregnant women were not to look directly toward them or their child would be imagined cross-took. In Norway, the Northern Lights were acknowledged to be the spirits of old house guardians moving in the sky and waving at those underneath, while in Greenland, people held oneself repudiating conviction that the lights were the spirits of youths. In 1616, the astronomer Galileo Galilei used the name aurora borealis to depict them, taking the name of the legendary Roman goddess of the dawn, Aurora, and the Greek name for wind of the north, Boreas. There are endless different stories and convictions like these.

I wasn’t really thinking about the Northern lights initially while talking about lights and colors but I ended up writing mostly about it. Northern lights also remind me of the famous Starry Night painting by Van Gogh. I don’t know why but it did. Every time I think about the sky, stars and moons, it always makes me feel tiny and it literally scares the shit out of me. But deep down, I have a feeling that one day, I am definitely going to Alaska. I will go up on a mountain path in one of those freezing time of the year. The sky would be clear, with the true starry night and I will catch and capture the beautiful and mysterious dance that is, the Northern lights.

“The sight filled the northern sky; the immensity of it was scarcely conceivable. As if from Heaven itself, great curtains of delicate light hung and trembled. Pale green and rose-pink, and as transparent as the most fragile fabric, and at the bottom edge a profound and fiery crimson like the fires of Hell, they swung and shimmered loosely with more grace than the most skillful dancer.” ~ Philip Pullman