Sharing the Northern Lights

On the night of October 10, smartphones across the Haliburton Highlands filled up with row upon row of beautiful ice-creamy swirled photos of our night sky. Our sun is in what is called a solar maximum, a natural part of its cycle where activity such as sunspots, flares, and coronal mass ejections are more frequent. According to organizations that monitor space weather, such as NASA, this solar maximum began in 2019 and is expected to peak next year. This all leads to the sun hurling highly charged particles out into space, and when they collide with Earth’s magnetic field they create auroras – borealis if you are in the northern hemisphere, australis if you are in the southern hemisphere.

Earth’s magnetic field protects us from these highly charged particles, which would otherwise be harmful to our atmosphere and us. However, solar storms still have the potential to wreak havoc with technology when not properly prepared for. In 1859 the most intense solar storm to impact Earth in recorded history caused aurora sightings at low latitudes near the equator and shut down the relatively new telegraph systems in North America and Europe. Some telegraph operators reported electrical shocks, as well as being able to transmit while disconnected from battery just using the highly charged atmosphere. In 1989 a solar storm caused a 9-hour power outage in Quebec. Organizations such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issue warnings about potentially damaging solar flares allowing electric companies to mitigate risks and prevent such outages.

If you went outside early in the evening on October 10, you may have only seen what looked like hazy cloud cover at first. However, if you happened to have a smartphone on you with a nighttime exposure setting, taking a picture of the sky would have revealed streaks of pinks and greens. Later in the evening, as the moon dipped below the horizon, to the naked eye the auroras were much more visible, but nothing like the brightly coloured spectacle that many were posting to social media. This is because the cameras built into modern phones are much better at detecting light than our day-time optimized eyes. What the cameras saw was indeed there, just beyond what our eyes are able to see unaided.

In my microbiology and biotechnology labs in university, we did a lot of work to reveal things we couldn’t see with just our eyes. To see single celled organisms like bacteria we would have to grow some in a broth, put a drop of that broth on a slide, add some dye, and then look at it under a microscope. Voila, an amazing world that we would not otherwise see, but was nonetheless all around us all the time. Likewise, scientists use machines such as scanning electron microscopes to help us see tiny things in immense detail that a regular microscope can’t. On a larger scale, giant telescopes like the James Webb space telescope let us see distant stars and planets in ways we have not been able to before.

Of course, a certain amount of caution needs to be taken when using technology to help see things. Visual artifacts and anomalies are possible with cameras and other equipment, so understanding what you’re seeing and why is very important. In some shared photos, photographers were perplexed by bright dots, orbs, and streaks in their photos. These anomalies can be attributed to aircraft, lens flares, dust, and light distortions, all of which were also enhanced by the camera’s long exposure time.

Some cynical commentary online grumbled about the photos of the auroras not looking like what people could really see with just their eyes, making them somehow not representative of the real experience. I disagree. Collectively, thousands of people used a piece of technology to see an atmospheric phenomenon better than they could otherwise and got really excited about it – which is amazing! Amateur and professional photographers alike were able to share their experience of the auroras and the excitement they felt while viewing and documenting a phenomenon that many don’t ever get to see in person, unaided or otherwise.

Learn more

Why are we seeing the Northern Lights so often lately? 2024. Max Matza. (BBC) Last accessed 2024/10/30.

Solar Cycle 25. (Wikipedia) Last accessed 2024/10/30.

Space Weather. (NASA Science) Last accessed 2024/10/30.

Hydro One GMD Preparedness Plan for Cycle 24 [PDF]. 2012. (NERC) Last accessed 2024/10/30.

March 1989 geomagnetic storm. (Wikipedia) Last accessed 2024/10/30.

Northeast Blackout of 2003. (Wikipedia) Last accessed 2024/10/30.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (Wikipedia) Last accessed 2024/10/30.

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