Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis)

[powerslave]

I've never seen the Northern Lights and apparently on certain days during the winter they can be observed from Calgary, or just outside of the city.

Does anyone know when these occur? Any way to check a website for these? The Weather Network doesn't have any information on this.

[Iqoair]

Missed out big time about a month ago. There was a wicked display of northern lights. Wish I had a decent camera at the time. Amazing.

[D'z Nutz]

Originally posted by powerslave
I've never seen the Northern Lights and apparently on certain days during the winter they can be observed from Calgary, or just outside of the city.

Does anyone know when these occur? Any way to check a website for these? The Weather Network doesn't have any information on this.

They can appear anytime of the year, but they are more obvious during the winters because our skies get so much darker. When they occur depends on solar activity.

Keep your eyes on http://www.spaceweather.com for announcements on when they are active.

[adam c]

ive seen them from inside the city... even tho all you could really see was green its amazing
btw. this was in midnapore

[Ekliptix]

yup

[Weapon_R]

We get some amazing northern lights each year. Keep an eye out this winter, you can't miss em

[D'z Nutz]

I took these last year.





My god, these are so bad! Hahahaha!!

[djayz]

^
what?!

those pictures are awesome i remember last year when you took those haha i had one as my wallpaper for a while

[DJ Lazy]

Originally posted by D'z Nutz
I took these last year.

My god, these are so bad! Hahahaha!!

Yea... Ekliptix has you beat man.. ....

[Beanie_baby]

anyone know what northern lights are??

Northern lights originate from our sun. During large explosions and flares, huge quantities of solar particles are thrown out of the sun and into deep space. These plasma clouds travel through space with speeds varying from 300 to 1000 kilometers per second.

But even with such speeds (over a million kilometer per hour), it takes these plasma clouds two to three days to reach our planet. When they are closing in on Earth, they are captured by Earth's magnetic field (the magnetosphere) and guided towards Earth's two magnetic poles; the geomagnetic south pole and the geomagnetic north pole.


On their way down towards the geomagnetic poles, the solar particles are stopped by Earth's atmosphere, which acts as an effective shield against these deadly particles.

When the solar particles are stopped by the atmosphere, they collide with the atmospheric gases present, and the collision energy between the solar particle and the gas molecule is emitted as a photon - a light particle. And when you have many such collisions, you have an aurora - lights that may seem to move across the sky.

[msommers]

Bill Nye FTW! Cool info though, I honestly had no idea!

[Ajay]

I grew up in Northern Alberta in a very small town (High Level).

The Northern Lights that you see here while quite nice are NOTHING compared to what is seen up there. Only thing I miss about living 12 hours north of Calgary....absolutely beautiful show up there for Northern Lights.

[Proboscis]

did anyone see that light show at 2:46 am? looked like a comet blew up. I seen it driving up sarcee

[Khyron]

I used to see them all the time in and around Edworthy park, and west, but now there's so much more buildings, not as often.

Khyron

[lilmira]

I've only seen it once while driving in the NE. I wasn't sure what it was for a few seconds. It was beautiful.
The light from the city may not work very well to any kind of sky watching.
Do they occur more often in certain direction or mostly random?

[5.0]

Here is a picture from a camp I worked at up north...

[Black Dragon]

I live in evergreen and i see the lights all the time. ive seen ones this summer that were spectacular

[allsr20edup]

you can see them on macknight at the airport view stop.

[Proboscis]

i was lookin east. shit blew up! not the northern lights. maybe i set off a roman candle at edworthy. oh well. great time to set off shit in Brickburn

[snade831]

I live in the southeast and have seen them several times during the winter. Pretty neat