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 https://infotel.ca/newsitem/aurora-borealis-forecast-to-shimmer-over-kamloops-okanagan-this-weekend/it106722 , 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 https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/cme-arrival-earth-has-occurred-and-warnings-have-been-issued , 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 are being treated to the displays. The aurora borealis occurs when energized particles from the sun hit the Earth’s atmosphere and are deflected to the magnetic poles by Earth’s magnetic field. The particles interact with the atmosphere, creating colours. Colours of aurora vary depending on the altitude where the solar particles combine with oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere. “Yellow and pink are rare and associated with high solar activity, blue and purple are little more common and green is most common,” said former president of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Chris Gainor in a previous interview with iNFOnews.ca. Cell phones often pick up colours that can’t be seen with the naked eye. “Sometimes the eye in your phone camera is different than ours, it changes the look of aurora,” he said. “Looking through telescopes or taking photographs with different cameras can change the appearance.”  These brilliant photographs taken in Kamloops and the Okanagan show all colours of the rainbow. The aurora borealis is notoriously difficult to predict, but according to the NOAA’s three-day forecast https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/communities/aurora-dashboard-experimental , it isn’t likely the aurora will be seen in southern BC for the next few days. To contact a reporter for this story, email Shannon Ainslie mailto:sainslie@infonews.ca  or call 250-819-6089 or email the editor mailto:news@infonews.ca . You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom mailto:tips@infonews.ca  and be entered to win a monthly prize draw. We welcome your comments and opinions on our stories but play nice. We won't censor or delete comments unless they contain off-topic statements or links, unnecessary vulgarity, false facts, spam or obviously fake profiles. If you have any concerns about what you see in comments, email the editor in the link above. SUBSCRIBE to our awesome newsletter here https://infotel.ca/newsletter .