Paula Lochte/Staff reporter
Over the next three years the northern lights will be seen more often in B.C.
Bill Murtagh, a space weather forecaster, says “more displays of the aurora borealis will be visible before the solar maximum in 2025.”
The northern lights are also called the aurora borealis. They will appear more often in the next three years. This is due to the increased activity of the sun which has an eleventh year cycle.
The polar lights have their origin with the sun. Solar flare creates the solar wind, which emits about one million tons of ion and electron plasma every second into the space. These charged particles move through space with a speed of 400 to 900 km/h and are also called plasma clouds. After two days the charged particles hit one of the two protective walls of the earth, the magnetic field. The ion and electron slightly compress the magnetic field and get directed to the poles, where the magnetic field lines bend almost vertically towards the earth and the particles come particularly close to the earth, into the atmosphere. At the poles, the ions and electrons encounter nitrogen and oxygen atoms. This generates excess energy, in the form of light.
The most common light is green, which is made 80-100km over the earth. The red auroras from oxygen, are found at about 200 km altitude. The rarest color is blue which is made from Nitrogen 150-600 km over the earth.
The northern lights move as elongated bands of light slowly across the night sky and are usually visible between 15 and 30 minutes.
In the next three years the sun will reach the solar maximum, which happens every eleven years. The sun has the highest activity at the solar maximum. The solar wind turns into a solar storm and more particles hit the earth magnetic field. Thereby the field gets more compressed and the ions and electrons come closer to the earth. Usually the lights reach from the poles to 60 degrees north and south latitude. On the solar maximum the lights can be even seen over the Mediterranean area. Vancouver is located at 49 degrees latitude, which means that the northern lights can be visible even when the sun is not that active, but the probability is much lower.
It is possible to see the northern lights in large and bright cities like Vancouver. However, the greatest chances are outside the city lights on a clear night. A good place to see the northern lights is Porteau Cove Provincial Park. The park is a beach area not far from Vancouver, near the sea to Sky Highway in Squamish. The further north the higher are the chances of seeing the lights in the sky.
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