About Land of Lights
Land of Lights is the brainchild/obsession of lutruwita/Tasmania based photographer and biologist, Benjamin “Benny” Alldridge.
Land of Lights is focused on one thing and one thing alone: things that glow – the weird things in our universe that exist at the intersection of fantasy, technology, and science.
Organisms that produce light on their own (bioluminescence), others that need a little jump start to do it (biofluorescence), and the sky spontaneously erupting into displays of motion and colour (aurorae): all of these are the things that Land of Lights was established to share with you.
We tailor itineraries to you, so that you can make the most of these phenomena – if you’re a total novice hearing about these things for the first time, or you’re hungry to understand the biology and physics of these processes, you are in control.
Bioluminescence and fluorescence
Humans experience less than a millionth of the reality we occupy – fragments of light, of sound, of scent, of even physical touch. Hiding away in that 99.9-some percent of the universe we can’t experience, the universe has some very clever tricks.
Bioluminescence (‘bios-’, Greek for ‘life’ + ‘lumen’, Latin for ‘light’) is the process of organisms producing light through chemical means. From tiny protist dinoflagellates that swamp shorelines in electric blue, sprawling plate mushrooms that drape dead trees in a ghostly glow, and tiny fly larvae that hang like twinkling stars in caves, Tasmania is host to a small collection of bioluminescent species, and very few times of the year go without sightings.
Seeing every day things light up in unfamiliar ways for the first time is an experience that is hard to forget. That is where our other friend, Biofluorescence (‘bios-’, + ‘fluere’, Latin for ‘flow’) comes in.
Much like bioluminescence, biofluorescence is the process of organisms producing light. But, unlike the others, they need a little kick-start to get them going – something that can be kicked off rather conveniently with little more than a hand-held torch and a little knowledge of where to look.
On balance, more organisms seem to exhibit this trait than those that don’t. Imagine: the trees you walk past every day, the snails on the ground, the birds and grass and flowers, even the neighbour’s dog, all suddenly ablaze with the most vibrant and discordant colours. This is the world of fluorescence. Even you glow.
Aurora Australis
Aurora australis, “the Southern Lights”, nuyina (the palawa kani for the phenomenon); no matter what you call it, they all refer to one of the most transformative and humbling an experience one can have in the night. Aside from New Zealand, there is no better place in the Southern Hemisphere to see the southern equivalent to the Aurora borealis than Tasmania, and as we move towards the rapidly approaching Solar Maximum for Solar Cycle 25, sightings are becoming more frequent all across the island.
Caused by strongly charged particles ejected from the Sun interacting with gases in our atmosphere, the lights range from a few tens of kilometres above sea level (not far above the cruise altitude of commercial aircraft) right up to the altitude of the International Space Station. As you go up through the layers of our atmosphere and encounter different gas compositions, different colours arise – vibrant greens and reds, rich blues, stunning whites, purples, pinks, and everything between, sometimes all at the same time.
“Aurora over SW Tasmania”, Western Wilds, lutruwita/Tasmania, 2023
Benjamin B. Alldridge
Benjamin B. Alldridge (the “B.” is mostly to make him sound cooler) is an award-winning, internationally infamous photographer specialising in documenting the earth after dark, with particular focus on the Land of Lights trifecta: bioluminescence, biofluorescence, and aurora. He is also a recovering biologist, and science/photography educator, specialising in things that are somewhat unusual. He is however less adept at writing in third-person than he is all of that other stuff.