麻豆约拍

From Rev鈥檇 Richard Coles, cleric and broadcaster:

One winter, not long ago, I made a trip, at considerable expense, to the north of Norway, far above the Arctic circle, to see something I have always longed to see: the aurora borealis dancing like the second summer of love.

Alas, for the entire duration of my trip the Northern Lights were obscured by cloud cover so deep the only thing I saw glowing on the horizon was a sign for the most northerly pizza joint in Scandinavia, where for the price of a maisonette in Stevenage I consoled myself with a Vesuvio.

Pizza would have turned to ashes in my mouth when I discovered that the Northern Lights were visible from Staffordshire this week. Yes, in an unusually generous display, the aurorae played as far south as the Midlands, where I live, and I missed it, again - because I was driving along on the M6 and forgot.

Maybe I鈥檒l have better luck with the eclipse although I鈥檝e seen one of those before. One of the abiding memories of my early childhood was being taken out of class at kindergarten into the playground and in those days of relaxed health and safety peering through a piece of smoked glass at the sun with what looked like a bite taken out of it, a partial solar eclipse.聽

Another鈥檚 due in about ten minutes, and with a bit of luck and a break in the cloud, we鈥檒l all be looking up at this celestial marvel.

Why we get so excited about solar eclipses and northern lights? I鈥檓 not sure. In the old days they were seen as signs of God鈥檚 displeasure or the presence of spirits, or the movements of the heavenly spheres, and we don鈥檛 interpret nature that way now. But for me, knowing about charged particles and lunar orbits does nothing to diminish the miraculousness of these phenomena. There could so easily have been nothing, but instead there are wonderfully unpredictable and unexpected things, that surprise us, and shake our complacency, and makes raise our eyes from the narrow horizons of our daily lives to the endless horizons of the universe.