I’ve had a photo of the northern lights or aurora borealis over Banff National Park on my computer desktop for many years (well, to be honest I might have changed it temporarily to a photo of The Twilight Saga; but that was just a phase).
If you were born in Canada, you might not realize how cool it is that you live in a place where you can see this incredible phenomenon. There are not many places on Earth that give you that opportunity, so it was no surprise that most of my friends wanted to know if I had seen the northern lights as soon as I returned to my home country.
While northern lights fascinate me, they have become a frustrating matter. Even though they can be seen across Canada, I was not able to see them while I was living there for three entire years.
It just seemed that I was constantly missing them. Many times I would go to work, open up Facebook (for work purposes, of course) and see that pretty much everyone I knew had captured the northern lights the night before, except me.
But I didn’t give up hope. The next night I would camp out in my backyard and wait patiently for the light show. But then, of course, it would never appear. In fact, as soon as I left Burns Lake people started posting pictures of the northern lights again.
Over the last couple of weeks, people in the lakes District were able to enjoy the spectacular light show more frequently due to a strong geomagnetic storm. A couple of local photographers, Takumi Ichiro Sakiyama and Carla Lewis, captured some incredible photos of the lights in Burns Lake.
Last week I also spoke to Dayna Vettese, a Meteorologist for the Weather Network, and she explained that the northern lights can occur at any time throughout the year, and the only reason we see them more often in winter is because of the longer nighttime hours.
While researching about the aurora borealis, I also came across some interesting facts.
The aurora borealis is named after the Roman goddess of the dawn, Aurora, and the Greek term for “wind of the north,” boreas. The aurora borealis is also visible from the southern hemisphere (although there are not many places where you can see them), and they have a different name there - aurora australis.
According to the Canadian Geographic magazine, the Earth isn’t the only planet where northern lights occur. The phenomenon can also be seen on Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus. But unlike the curtains of colourful light that appear on Earth, the aurora on Uranus look more like faint glowing dots. Despite not having a magnetic field, astronomers have also noted an aurora-like phenomenon on Venus due to the reaction between the solar wind and the ions in the planet’s ionosphere.
Most people know that major solar storms can cause power outages. What you may not know or remember is that during a 1989 geomagnetic storm, Quebec lost power for 12 hours and the aurora borealis was seen as far south as Florida and Cuba.
According to the Canadian Geographic magazine, scientists in Canada have been studying the northern lights for more than 170 years. Canada’s first magnetic observatory, the Toronto Magnetic and Meteorological Observatory, was established in 1839 and is the oldest scientific institution in Canada.
It was also cool to learn that astronauts on board of the International Space Station can see the northern lights from the side.
Maybe that’s where I need to go to finally see the aurora borealis.