Alberta aurora watchers treated to stunning Northern Lights display
Parts of northcentral Alberta were awash in purple, pink, teal and green hues Monday night, in a gorgeous display of aurora borealis.
“We were actually able to see some spectacular Northern Lights in the early evening,” said Frank Florian, senior manager of planetarium of space sciences with the Telus World of Science Edmonton.
“It really kicked in and created an incredible light show in the early evening for people, even in light-polluted environments like the City of Edmonton.
“A lot of people reported seeing them, were amazed by them. A lot of photos were actually taken of them. It was just an incredible event,” Florian said.
He explained the instigator of auroral activity is the sun.
“The sun itself actually, a few days back, blew off part of its atmosphere — something called a coronal mass ejection.
“When these coronal mass ejections are aimed towards the Earth, in its general vicinity, this stuff will interact with the Earth’s magnetic field, the Earth’s gasses, the atmospheres, and basically that gas begins to glow.”
The sun is reaching its peak activity, Florian added, which is why auroral events are more frequent.
“We’re coming up to solar maximum. The sun itself undergoes a 11-year solar cycle, part of a larger 22-year cycle, where the activity on the sun increases and decreases in that 11-year cycle. Right now we’re coming up to solar max which astronomers are thinking should be at the end of this year, 2023.”
Florian explained the different colours come from different gasses.
“The red is due to atomic oxygen in the upper atmosphere. So when the atomic oxygen, which is the single atom of oxygen, get excited by these electrical particles, they emit red light, whereas when it comes down further in the Earth’s
Read more on globalnews.ca
