@sundogplanets I’m actually kinda jealous of your photos since they were supposed to be visible here as well but of course it was super cloudy the whole time so I wouldn’t know. 🙁

Those are some pretty lights! I’ve only once before seen aurora borealis when I was serving in the defense force in the weather corps and we had a duty to take readings and check the visibility “manually” by climbing a tower every three hours and estimate the visibility based on what island is visible and then send a SYNOP report to the meteorological institute. One night I remember climbing up and it was a clear, kinda cold winter night. It was like past midnight and I was pretty tired at the time but I enjoyed those weather watch duties since it was very calm and you were basically relieved of all duties for the duration and the next morning. There’s not too much time to go and record the observations since the SYNOP must go out at a specific hour or the weather readings for that station would be blank and that was at the time very shameful thing to happen since usually it implies you had slept past the report window.

Anyway as I was looking at the lights from the mainland I noticed from the corner of my eye something kinda moving in the sky. At night things usually look weird as we know but when I stared right at the spot where I thought I saw something I saw this somewhat pale green aurora borealis just dancing there. It was somewhat difficult to see at times but I’m certain it was aurora borealis. If I remember right the SYNOP had a code for aurora borealis, though it might’ve been that we recorded other observations elsewhere, but regardless I recorded my observations for that night and the next day the commanding officer wanted to have a chat about it. They were suspicious that I might’ve either made the whole thing up or mistaken some lights from the mainland as aurora borealis as that happens sometimes as well, but I was adamant that I know what I saw. They let that slide, as it was just one report so there really wasn’t any real harm done even if it would’ve been something else.

I don’t remember if it was ever confirmed whether or not there were aurora borealis that far to the south that day but I know in my heart that it was and it’s kinda silly but it also sort of feels like it was putting on a show just for me. Since then I’ve hoped to see more but each time there’s a chance one might see them here it’s cloudy or it’s raining. Maybe one day I’ll see it again, hopefully.

I didn’t enjoy much of my time serving since it was on an island and you couldn’t go out on the town for the night like in some of the other bases and you were pretty isolated there with not much to do. You got out to mainland only on the weekends and even then every fourth weekend you’d be stationed as one of the weekend crew manning the weather station. But that one time with the aurora borealis, that night I enjoyed in all it’s glory even though the lights were immensely less impressive as in your pictures.