A Bucket List Experience
Seeing an Aurora has been on my bucket list for some years.
There are two auroras, the Aurora Borealis, otherwise known as the Northern Lights, in the Northern Hemisphere, and the Aurora Australis in the Southern Hemisphere. Now it’s much more common for people to see the Aurora Borealis when they visit countries closer to the Arctic Circle, as Earth’s magnetic field attracts solar flares that create this beautiful natural phenomenon. There are way more countries in the Northern Hemisphere that are closer to the North Pole – from those in Scandinavia, to Russia, Canada, Iceland and Greenland, so auroras are seen more commonly there.
Here in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s rarer and much harder to see with the naked eye. We are much farther from Antarctica and the South Pole, so solar flares have to be particularly strong to be seen from Australia, New Zealand, Chile and South Africa. This is why, when there was a notification on 20 January 2026 that there was a massive solar flare and likely to be the ability to see the Aurora Australis that night not far from home, my husband and I decided to drive 1.5 hours south away from the bright lights of Melbourne to Cape Schank on the southern coastline of mainland Australia to see if we could see it.
Aurora Australis 20 January 2026 from Cape Schank Victoria © Imogen Lamport
Because we are still thousands of kilometres away from the lights, unlike the dancing overhead, visible to the naked eye in places closer to the magnetic poles, you don’t get those stunning dancing waves you may see (like in the video below, which has a great scientific explanation of the lights).
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But what is fascinating is that as soon as you turn on your camera (night mode), you see the aurora through it. Why is this? Well, it’s to do with the cones and rods in our eyes.
Cones are the color receptors in our eyes, and rods are the light receptors. Sadly, our cones don’t work well in low light, and you can only see the aurora when it’s dark (and well after sunset, with little to no moon) and of course not too many clouds obscuring the southern horizon. Rods, which help us see in the dark, don’t have color receptors.
Our colour-receiving cones could see a faint green glow on the horizon and faint streaks of light rising into the sky (these are known as beams or ribbons), but missed the reds, pinks, and purples that are seen in auroras.
The minute you look through your camera, you start to see the colours. And it is beautiful.
As the light faded after nautical sunset, the first glimmer of the aurora appeared. Photo © Imogen Lamport
I’m still keen to see the Aurora Borealis from inside or close to the Arctic Circle, where you get to watch the lights dance in a way you just don’t get when you live so far from the action. But I’m glad that I have seen the beautiful lady dance in the sky.
So what’s this got to do with personal color analysis?
It’s why I can’t do an accurate analysis at night or even in the dusk. This is why I do them all during daylight – 9.30am – 3pm ideally, as this is when daylight is strongest and so colours appear at their most vibrant.
It’s why I have so many windows (and skylights) in my studio, as I need really good light to do an accurate personal color analysis. And on a dull day, I turn on my daylight-emitting lights.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Imogen Lamport of AoPI (@academyofprofessionalimage)
It’s why, even when doing online analysis, I only do it during the brightest part of the day: when I’m comparing a swatch to a photo on my computer screen, it needs to be as bright as the photo I’m comparing it to. The minute the room starts getting dull, I won’t get an accurate result.
What does it mean for you when choosing what colours to wear?
During the day, when our cones are firing, color has the greatest impact. This is when the colours you wear make the biggest difference to your appearance, as they reflect their full intensity on your skin.
At nighttime, when there is less light, you can get away with brighter colours than may suit you during the day, as our cones can’t pick up the same intensity that they would when lighting is better.
Discover Your Best Colours
It’s time to stop wasting time, energy and money when shopping on all the wrong colours and zoom in quickly on the ones that make you shine – get your online color analysis here and start curating a wardrobe of clothes that work together simply and easily because they are in harmony with each other and you.
