Northern-Lights
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The Great Northern Lights Show, 2024
The aurora activities on May 10-11, 2024, was truly a great northern lights show. A series of violent explosions of a sun spot a few days earlier created the ideal condition for a Kp 8-9 storm (9 being the highest on the Kp scale) that lasted over 24 hours. Millions of people around the globe, including tropical areas like Puerto Rico and Africa, were able to see the aurora with unaided eyes. This image was taken on Pelee Island, the southernmost inhabited land in Canada. Even at such southerly latitude (42 degrees), aurora filled the sky.
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Spring Equinox Aurora
A severe (Kp 8) geomagnetic storm on March 23, 2023, just 3 days after spring equinox, produced colourful aurora visible in the outskirt of the Waterloo Region in Ontario. Aurora is driven by solar activities, which ebb and flow following an 11-year cycle. The current solar cycle is expected to peak some time in 2024. In addition, aurora activities also peak around the spring and fall equinoxes, when the sun’s magnetic field and the earth’s magnetic field are in better alignment, increasing the chance of solar wind particles reaching Earth’s upper atmosphere creating aurora.
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The Night Northern Lights Danced
One doesn’t have to travel to faraway northern locations to see the northern lights. This intense northern lights display was photographed in east Perth County, 20 minutes west of Waterloo, during a strong Kp 7 geomagnetic storm on September 18, 2023.
Northern lights come in different colours. Green is the most common, created when solar wind particles excite oxygen atoms in the atmosphere. Red is seen during more intense storms when oxygen atoms are excited at high altitude.
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Northern Lights Reflection, Costello Creek
The northern lights were fleeting this night, but when they were shining, colourful red and green pillars filled the northern horizon and added vibrant hues to the Costello Creek in Algonquin Park. Northern lights were not in the forecast for the night, but when the Kp and Bz readings (both indicators of potential aurora activities) unexpectedly turned favourable, we ditched our plan for Milky Way photography and pivoted to northern lights, and we were not disappointed.
The northern Milky Way, Cassiopeia and the Double Cluster in Perseus are to the right of the aurora. The Andromeda Galaxy is a small fuzzy patch near the right edge of the image.
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Northern Lights, Southampton
Northern lights shining over the Southampton Lighthouse in the evening of September 2, 2023, during a moderate (Kp 6) geomagnetic storm. The just-risen full moon illuminated the lighthouse, and turned the sky deep blue. The Kp index, which has a value from 0 to 9, is a measurement of geomagnetic activity. A Kp value of 5, indicating a minor geomagnetic storm, can bring on northern lights activity in southern Ontario.
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October Storm (in the Magnetosphere)
A Kp 8 severe geomagnetic storm hit Earth through the night of October 10-11, 2024, sparking widespread northern through all of Canada, US and as far south as Puerto Rico and Mexico. Together with the Kp 9 storm on May 10-11, these were the strongest geomagnetic disturbances recorded in the past 20 years.
This image was taken in Southampton, Ontario around 10 pm, when the northern lights surged in strength and blanketed the entire sky. The most common colours of aurora are green (from oxygen at low altitude) and red (from oxygen at high altitude). The orange aurora seen in this image came from the mixing of red and green.
