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In the interests of fairness and science, I've mocked up something like what I saw with my own eyes last night, in case it happens again tonight.

As I mentioned, when I first looked out, I saw a huge band of uniform grey mist, which to all intents and purposes looked like a blanket of cloud. I thought "typical", because whenever we get something rare happening in the sky, it's either overcast, or there's clouds exactly in the wrong place.

"Of course there'd be a blanket of cloud blocking your view to the north, when the northern lights are the strongest they've ever been. Of course!"

But then I saw a star shining through this "grey cloud", and that did seem odd. It shouldn't have been that bright even through a mist. So I took a quick snap with my phone, just in case. And it wasn't just green, it was luminously green.

"Oh my gosh, it's not a cloud...that IS the aurora!"

Jamie Nemeth

Phones and my proper camera revealed reds, greens, blues, purples that were not visible by eye. But then you could start to see structure emerge from the uniform grey mist, the "rays" of colour on the camera mapping to the "rays" of black and white.

And then, unexpectedly, as more neighbours joined us on our street to have a look, a pink ray appeared to the naked eye, and you could just faintly see some blues dancing around. It was spectacular without a camera, just even more spectacular with.

People further north have claimed to see more colours by eye, and given how strong the aurora were last night, I believe them. But yes, in general, the camera does lie. Or at least, in this case, it's our eyes that lie. The aurora aren't usually strong enough to set off our eyes' colour-sensitive cones, only our monochromatic rods.

But last night, they were a lot, lot, lot stronger than normal, so possibly for the first time in our lifetime, and certainly on our doorstep, in areas with less light pollution, we had half a chance.