The northern lights put on a show of varying intensity for Canadians over night Monday into Tuesday.
Robyn Fiori, a senior researcher and duty forecaster within the Canadian Hazards Information Service, in a phone interview early Tuesday afternoon, said data from a near-Earth satellite that tracks coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the sun showed “a change in the magnetic field and in our solar wind around about 6:40 p.m.”
Just after 7 p.m., she said, “we started to see fluctuations in the magnetic field of the earth and that led to the geomagnetic activity that was associated with the aurora.”
Char Wadden posted this northern lights photo on X from Tiny Township on Sept. 16.
The Canadian Space Weather agency had issued a major geomagnetic storm watch.
“I’m not sure exactly what time the aurora was observed across the country — a lot of that depended on how dark it is, how big the city you’re in is — how much light pollution there’s going to be.
“But certainly overnight there were a lot of reports across the province (of Ontario), I believe across the country as well.”
Nancy Stepien posted this northern lights photo on X from just north of Guelph.
As for an encore for tonight (Tuesday)?
Probably not.
“We have ended our major geomagnetic storm watch at noon eastern time today (Tuesday),” she said.
“It is possible that we’re going to see some disturbed conditions moving forward but the bulk of the coronal mass ejection (from the sun) has passed and we’re not expecting anything significant.
“Anything is possible because the solar wind and the solar magnetic field can fluctuate on their own outside of the arrival of a CME but those CMEs are what really provide those dramatic conditions that push the aurora southward.”
The sun is getting near its peak phase of a regular 11-year cycle, emitting more CMEs than usual, some of which can excite earth’s magnetic field and greatly extend the range of the Northern Lights.
She noted that “a couple of new active regions were numbered earlier today” on the sun, and it’s from these active regions that CMEs are normally produced.
“So we’ll see if anything interesting comes from those as they rotate around as well.”
Stay tuned.