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By Jamie Howden
On Sunday 6th March 2016 Perthshire was swathed in a spectacular blanket of blue, yellow, green and purple as the Aurora Borealis filled our night sky. Social media went wild with images of this stunning natural phenomenon as we all rushed out to capture the seldom seen Northern Lights in such magnificent glory.
Most of us were entranced by an golden green but as you’ll see in these stunning photographs, there were patches of red, yellow, green and violet streaming and filling the sky with a rippling curtain of colour and magical, eerie glow.
They say that once seen, it is never forgotten and from the Aurora Borealis in the Northern Hemisphere to the Aurora australis in the Southern, the mysteries surrounding this beautiful display from Mother Nature are the stuff of legends.
The scientists will tell you that the dancing lights of the aurora are collisions between electrically charged particles from the sun that enter the earth's atmosphere. The lights are seen above the magnetic poles of the northern and southern hemispheres, hence the 'Aurora borealis' and 'Aurora australis'.
The Maori of New Zealand believed that the lights were reflections of the spirits of their people. The Menominee Indians of Wisconsin believed that the lights showed the manabai'wok (giants) who were the spirits of great hunters and fishermen. The Inuit of Alaska saw the spirits of the seals, salmon, deer and beluga whales they hunted.
Us Scots though would refer to the lights as “Merry Dancers” engaged in bloody battle. Course we did...!
GALLERY PHOTOGRAPHERS
Jamie Howden: Jamie is a regular contributor to Small City and is a prolific Instagrammer. If you’d like to see more of his work follow him on Instagram here.
Ruth Trotter: Ruth is a Bankfoot based photographer who is renowned for her portraiture and wedding imagaery. Check out her website here.
Nadine Sabbagh: Nadine is a keen amateur photographer and a supervisor at Alison Kirk Bridal.
Ian Potter: Ian works as part of the PK Perspective Team capturing images from across Perth and Kinross. Check out their website here.
Aaron De la Hayé: Aaron is an artist based in Bankfoot - follow his Facebook Page here.
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