A Scot has been left shocked after snapping a picture of a ghostly face in the sky. Scott Livingstone, 40, had been with his daughter watching the aurora borealis as it passed over his house in Thurso when he noticed the shape.
He grabbed his camera and started snapping pictures of the centre of the Northern Lights as it morphed and changed colour. The phenomenon in the centre of the aurora borealis, which is called a spectrum, is caused when Nitrogen causes blue and deep red hues emitted by the various atoms in earth's outer atmosphere.
Upon checking his photos Scott was left shocked after noticing a face looking down on him. Speaking to the Daily Record about the rare snap, he said: "We have a wee extension to the side of the house so me and my daughter were watching the aurora moving across with the spectrum which is what they call the rip in the centre.
"It was morphing and changing colour as it went over so I was snapping photos. It was when I was going through them that I saw the face.
"I was a bit shocked at first. I did a double-take when I recognised the face it was quite amazing actually.
"I've never seen anything like that before. I'm not sure what you could really call it.
"We've seen something like it before in 2016 but that was the first time I've seen a physical shape."
What causes the Aurora Borealis?
Activity on the sun's surface, like the hole in this instance, is what causes the Northern Lights to appear in the sky. Solar storms generate massive clouds of electrically charged particles, some of which may travel millions of miles and collide with the Earth.
These can become captured in the Earth's magnetic field, accelerating down towards the north and south poles into the atmosphere. The Northern Lights as we see them are atoms and molecules in our atmosphere colliding with particles from the Sun. The aurora's characteristic wavy patterns and 'curtains' of light are caused by the lines of force in the Earth’s magnetic field.
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