A moonbow above Hoopers Inlet on July 25. Perhaps I’ve led a sheltered life, but until July 25, 2020, 54 years on this planet, I had never seen a moonbow. William Wordsworth famously wrote that ‘‘My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky.’’ I wonder what he would have made of a moonbow. Kai Tahu call the aurora ‘‘Nga kahukura o hine-nui-te-po’’, which means ‘‘the rainbow of the goddess of the night’’. It is ironic that on a night I was hunting one rainbow I got to enjoy another!

Source: Otago Daily Times August 23, 2020 15:22 UTC