The Cosmologist and the Aurora
By Dr. Sten Odenwald
NASA/IMAGE satellite program

A few weeks ago I returned from Norway having completed a one-week filming 
'shoot' of an upcoming episode of NASA's Sci Files. With the memories of 
dancing aurora still fresh in my mind, I thought I would share with you 
some of my impressions of them. It isn't often that I feel compelled to 
share my personal experience of nature with the general public, because 
most of them would have no meaning to a wider audience. But in this 
particular instance I think there is an exception to be made.

I have read dozens of eyewitness accounts, and seen hundreds of photos of 
aurora, but nothing prepared me for what I actually experienced. I will 
share a few of my impressions with you, while keeping others firmly under 
lock and key for my own private contemplation.

The very first thing I noticed was that aurora do not simply appear in the 
starry sky like a light suddenly turned on in a darkened room. Instead, it 
is a sensual and even seductive process of growing into existence from out 
of nothingness. They do not rise up off the horizon and ascend to the 
zenith like a cloud chased by the afternoon winds. They seem to grow in 
brightness like a memory that clarifies as you bring it steadily to mind. 
Suddenly, it is there and you feel compelled to watch it as it continues to 
unfold. It is the kind of compulsion you feel at a fireworks celebration, 
or while listening to a Bach concerto. You don't want to blink or divert 
your attention for a single moment for fear of missing something wonderful 
in the next instant. So you stand in the dark, in the cold, watching your 
breath condense and fall to the ground, knowing that your patience will be 
well rewarded. You listen to the sound of your heartbeat, and marvel at the 
silence of these shapes and forms.

The next thing you experience is a growing sense of awe, and a powerful 
feeling that you are standing in the presence of a force of nature. It is 
not the kind of force that a physicist can tell you about. It doesn't move 
matter, but instead it moves your thoughts with a persistence that is hard 
to explain in words. The longer you watch, the more are your thoughts 
pushed out of the light of consciousness as though acted upon by an 
irresistible force from above.

As you watch the serpentine shapes move across the sky, you are staggered 
by their cadence and dynamism. Nothing you ever read in a textbook or 
account prepares you for this. With every tick of the watch, and also at a 
speed so fast the eye can hardly follow, the plenum of the draperies change 
in unexpected but not random ways,

The draperies are not fixed in space or time.  They are formed from 
pulsating beams of light that rain down the sky from high above, and march 
along the drapery from end to end. With their passing, which takes all of 
five seconds, the curtains begin to ripple and wave at their lowest edges 
as though caught in a celestial breeze. Like a snake that moves by rippling 
its body across the ground, aurora seem also to move in like manner, though 
as a scientists I know full well that this is but illusion. The experience 
of the dancing aurora literally rips words from your mouth like 'Oh my 
God!' and gasps of breath and even primal grunts. As you marvel at the 
rapid changes that race faster than a heartbeat, you can't help but see 
this as a wonderful and glorious moment in your life.


As the aurora finally dissipate for the last time and you stumble your way 
in the dark back to your room, another thought begins to intrude. Why is it 
that so many northern folks from Lapland to Alaska seem to get this 
experience so dreadfully wrong?  Without exception, all of the folk tales 
and lore which surrounds the aurora experience are sinister, negative and 
dreadful? Why so many stories of aurora as decapitating child stealers, and 
omens of war? And then the answer comes to you as clear as a 
bell.  Sometimes the only value to ancient 'knowledge' is to remind us how 
far we have come from ignorance and superstition, to arrive at the warm 
fires of wisdom. It has been said that 'The Truth shall set you free'. So 
perhaps it is time to finally put away all the old stories much as we 
struggle to forget our nightmares.

As you find your way into bed and  turn off the lights you feel a sense of 
joy that is hard to describe at having finally seen such a beautiful 
phenomenon for the first time in your 50-odd years of life. Three hours 
later, you awaken to a daylight-filled room only to realize that it is only 
2:30 AM in the morning by the clock on the night table. Looking out the 
window,  from horizon to horizon you see curtains of light brighter than a 
full moon, which create a false-dawn. And so again you stand there with a 
lump in your throat, and watch the dance renew itself once more.