The Earliest Account of an Aurora Now Dates to the 10th Century BC

One of the tools that astronomers use to calculate the rhythms of space phenomena is historical accounts, which can go back as far as written language itself. The difficulty of finding these historical records is translating them, both in language and in deciphering what the description refers to in modern terms. Scholars have identified what may be the oldest written description of an aurora yet found, in an ancient Chinese text called The Bamboo Annals. These court records of King Zhāo’s reign have a reference to "a five-colored light seen in the northern part of the night sky." The writing is dated to 977 or 957 BC. That makes it 300 years earlier than the previous earliest known account.  

The records have been available for a long time, but scientists say a 16th-century translation erred in calling the sight a comet instead of a five-colored light. They also know that at the time, the earth's magnetic pole was in the right place for aurora to have been seen in central China. Read more about this finding at Smithsonian.   

(Image credit: Martincco)