Aurora DeepTime 

Moot Hall, Hexham Marketplace

Saturday 8th August 10am – 5pm

Sunday 9th August 10am – 3pm

FREE ENTRY

Access to the Moot Hall is via steps

Aurora DeepTime is an immersive spatial work made by the ‘Sensing Remoteness’ research group, based at Northumbria University for the Cosmic Frequencies Festival 2026. Visitors to Hexham’s Moot Hall are invited to experience the uniquely intense space weather events of May 2024 — seen across Northumberland as the Aurora or Northern Lights — as vibratory traces left by three space probes, as they surf the wake of solar storms. 

The piece draws upon X-ray, magnetic field, and ion flux data from the SolO (Solar Orbiter), ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer), and GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites) to resonate the medieval space of the Moot Hall. The existing medieval architecture is heard to sing new tones coloured by and created from the sonification of space weather data. Simultaneously, the architecture is illuminated by modulations of coloured light, reflecting upon the transformations in the architecture of Earth’s magnetic field as it responds to the influx of particles and waves of information that constitute the storms that result in the deep-time phenomenon of the Aurora Borealis

Sensing Remoteness group members who have contributed to Aurora DeepTime are:

Professor Fiona Crisp (Interdisciplinary Artist); Dr Jorge Boehringer (Interdisciplinary Sound Artist); Dr Daniel Ratliff (Mathematician); Luis Guzmán (Space Artist); Dr Steph Yardley (Solar Physicist); and Dr Bennett Hogg (Composer & Sound Artist). 

Image credit: NASA