Aurora in the Eighties

A large, all-sky auroral display over Scotland in March 1982 captured on film.

My first photographic record of aurora was from October 1981. A non-astronomical friend called to say he’d seen something like searchlights and wondered if it was aurora. This display was just a couple of long rays from my location, and certainly stirred my interest, but the big one was on 1st-2nd March 1982 – the biggest auroral storm since the International Geophysical year in 1957-8. This storm went all-sky in c...