The earliest documented case of an aurora dates to the early 10th century BCE. Ancient Chinese text describes ‘five-coloured light’ witnessed in the northern part of the night sky towards the end of the reign of King Zhao, the fourth king of the Chinese Zhou dynasty. The exact dates of Zhao’s reign aren’t known, but it’s likely that this event happened in either 977 or 957 BCE. Researchers discovered this colourful detail in the Bamboo Annals, a
