EDMONTON – Delighted sky watchers were treated to one of the most incredible aural displays of the year late Sunday and early Monday morning.
Alberta-based photographer Mike Van Der Hoek has been chasing Aurora Borealis for the last three years. He rated Sunday’s display as one of the “best shows of the year.”
“The northern lights are something that we are very lucky to see.”
A rather strong solar storm resulted in visible aurora for many northern communities, and for Van Der Hoek, who was photographing the display near Elk Point, AB, the lights were “dancing right across the sky and very visible with the naked eye.”
He created a timelapse video taken between 11:30 p.m. Sunday and 1:00 a.m. Monday and shared it with Global Edmonton on Twitter.
The northern lights in Alberta have been nothing short of spectacular this year — appearing every two to three weeks near Edmonton, and every three to four weeks near Calgary.
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If you were lucky enough to catch a glimpse, Sunday night’s display was a unique one to see. A bright purple aurora arc was visible for some time.
The Southwest Research Institute theorizes that the most common types of northern lights shine bright green in wide sheets and swirls fuelled by a wide spectrum of electromagnetic energy. The slender aurora arc from Sunday night had a rare vertical orientation.
The institute believes that more discrete electromagnetic energies create these arcs, but that they could have become amplified by electric potential drops that form at very high altitudes.
The Alberta Aurora Chasers Facebook group has been a great resource for Van Der Hoek, who planned to shoot the skies again Monday night. He says that “when a good show is coming it’s amazing to see the amount of activity on the page and it’s always a good barometer of what the night will be like.”
In terms of how to capture a great photo of northern lights? Van Der Hoek says that all you need is a tripod and a camera with manual settings, and that most of his photos “are set at F 2.8 for 15 second exposure at an ISO around 1200.”
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