Seeking an Aurora: A Wondrous Illustrated Celebration of Earth’s Most Otherworldly Spectacle of Light and Color

Transcendence and tenderness in the lacuna of awe between the creaturely and the cosmic.

In 1621, already questioning his life in the priesthood — the era’s safest and most reputable career for the educated — the 29-year-old Pierre Gassendi, a mathematical prodigy since childhood, traveled to the Arctic circle as he began diverting his passionate erudition toward Aristotelian philosophy and astronomy. There, under the polar skies, he witnessed an otherworldly spectacle on Earth — our planet’s m...