TORONTO – Dave Patrick is a storm chaser, but on Saturday night, he wasn’t chasing tornadoes. He was chasing the northern lights.
The Fergus, Ont., resident has a knack for spotting storms and capturing tornadoes that sometimes not even Environment Canada sees. It seems that his luck extends out into the night, too.
On Friday, the sun unleashed a coronal mass ejection (CME), sending particles into space, toward Earth. The impact of the particles on Earth’s magnetic field triggered the northern lights, also known as the aurora borealis on Friday and Saturday.
READ MORE: Sun eats comets, releases coronal mass ejections
Despite the freezing temperatures and fighting a cold, Patrick just had to try to capture the beautiful dance of lights on camera.
“It was biting cold,” Patrick told Global News. “Minus 20 Celsius with a 15-kilometre wind giving wind chills to -29, and it felt like it.”
After driving to a location north of Fergus, Patrick set up his camera on a tripod. His first two test shots showed some green aurora, but because the moon was up, the light of the aurora wasn’t strong enough to be visible with the naked eye. Patrick left his camera shooting every 30 seconds. Because cameras can take longer exposures, they pick up faint light that the human eye can’t.
Patrick said that the lights started off green, but as the storm grew stronger, different colours began to emerge.
“I could see the pillars form and move,” he said. “If this was a night with no moon it would have been a great show.”
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