Seeing The Northern Lights By Bike
So. I was riding from Tynemouth to Whitley Bay last night when I noticed an eerie green and purple glow in the sky. Naturally, I stopped, rubbed my eyes, checked that there was nothing wrong with my headlight and continued on. Could this be the northern lights I was seeing?
After I picked up Daughter from her stage class, we decided to head home via the sea front to see what we could see. Strangely enough, the possibility of seeing the aurora made Daughter forget how nervous she is of the roundabouts and junctions that we used.
Anyway, when we got to the Spanish City, this is what we saw:
So these were FAKE northern lights.
That’s a bunch of lasers shining almost horizontally into the sky, right over our heads. The red light fades quickest, and by the time you’re a couple of miles away, all you see is horizontal bands of green and purple.
It turns out that this is an array of 110W lasers that form the Yvette Mattern’s Global Rainbow artwork. It’s here in Whitley Bay for the next few nights as part of the Cultural Olympiad.
It’ll be here ’till Sunday night - if you’re in the area, it’s definitely worth a detour to see!
