Students’ Mystic Nights With The Northern Lights
Photo Credit: Adelaide Guan
On the night of May 10, the northern lights dazzled the skies of Vancouver with their fantastical hues and multi-coloured beams of light. Numerous Hamber students experienced this phenomenon for the first time and watched in awe from different areas across the city.
The northern lights, which are commonly seen in the arctic regions of the world, are polar lights. Polar lights are the product of charged particles from the sun being launched along Earth’s magnetic field and colliding with the gasses in Earth’s upper atmosphere.
These charged particles are known as solar winds and Earth’s magnetic field protects the world from them. However, as these magnetic field lines are stretched, they eventually snap back like elastic bands and cast some charged particles towards Earth’s surface. This is how polar lights are formed.
Sometimes, when we are lucky, we are able to see the polar lights from other parts of the world. When the sun is especially active, the northern lights will stretch upon a further route, reaching down to southern Canada and the US. As a result, certain parts of Canada will be able to view the lights for a short period of time.
During the northern lights’ active period in Vancouver, Hamberites were able to view them from all over the city. Kae Lin Whiton (11) was able to see them from outside of her house, but noticed that she could hardly make out the lights. However, she found that when she took out her phone camera, the colours were much more prominent.
“We could see some white, light green, a bit of pink, and blue, but it was all quite faint and pastel,” Ruby Doughty (12) said. “It looked really cool but not at all how the pictures looked.”
On the contrary, Divya Gill (11) was able to see all of the colours with her naked eye. “Where I was, there wasn’t any light pollution, but it was still much more vibrant on the phone camera,” she said. “I could see these white lines in the sky that were shooting outwards and I would look to the east and it would be really green. Then I would look to the west and it would be very pink.”
Gill also noticed that the lights were rapidly moving and changing. “It kept moving every few seconds. You would look up again and it would change,” she said.
Gill was in West Vancouver when her sister called to tell her to go outside right away. “We were so confused. My mom thought there was an emergency,” Gill said.
When she saw the phenomenon in the sky she was shocked. “I was so excited that I started jumping up and down.”
Many Hamberites didn’t know about the northern lights until the night of. “I saw a bunch of my friends posting about it on social media so I went out and checked it out,” Ayden McGee (11) said. Other students found out about the northern lights through friends and family. “My mom knew that they were out so we went to Queen Elizabeth Park to go see them,” Ayden Hollihn (11) added.
Natalie Weemees (12) went on a hunt for the northern lights, traveling around the city to see them from different perspectives. “I saw them at my house, Jericho Beach, and the road towards UBC,” Weemees said. “It was a once in a lifetime experience; I never thought that I would’ve been able to see them from Vancouver.”