iN PHOTOS: Night skies illuminated by northern light in Kamloops, Okanagan
Vibrant northern lights lit up skies over Kamloops and the Okanagan twice this week, and area photographers captured the brilliant phenomenon. The most recent aurora borealis display, Oct. 10, occurred when a coronal mass ejection from the sun reached Earth triggering severe geomagnetic storm activity.The ejection arrived travelling almost 1.5 million miles per hour and is one of two ejections anticipated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. Coronal mass ejections are large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the sun’s corona that can are sometimes aimed at Earth and take days to arrive.The solar activity prompted NOAA to issue a severe geomagnetic storm warning, and sparked a sky full of shimmering aurora that was captured by photographers in the Thompson-Okanagan region.Typically, the light displays are reserved for northern locations closer to the north pole, but this year the sun is nearing its maximum solar flare activity in an 11-year cycle and residents further south…
12 Oct 13:00 · iNFOnews.ca