I’ve seen the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis a number of times before — once a long time ago in northern Saskwatchewan, and not long after that on a drive through northern Ontario, and then a couple of times during the intervening forty years or so, but not more than half a dozen. They have always been amazing to watch, but I can safely say that I have never seen a display like we saw at our cottage in the Ottawa Valley just before Thanksgiving. We were told by friends that the ** index — a measure of sunspot electrical activity, which is what creates the Aurora Borealis — was high, so we went out to the local cemetery to try to get a good look at the northern sky, and we were gobsmacked.
There were red and green and yellow and half a dozen colours in between, shooting off in all directions, and wavering back and forth like the flame from a fireplace. As if that wasn’t enough, we also saw a comet — comet A3, also known as Tsuchinshan–ATLAS, which was last seen in our solar system about 80,000 years ago. The tail was quite bright, despite the fact that the moon was out and was almost full. And so we stood there in the cold and watched both the comet and these amazing northern lights, and then went back to the cottage.
Awhile later, Becky went out to our cabin for something, and then told us to come down to the dock, where we saw an even more incredible display! We didn’t need to go to the cemetery at all — the aurora was everywhere, all around the entire dome of the sky, with tendrils of light stretching all the way up to the top of the sky. There were pockets of red and green, and white, and yellow, and pink, and purple, all of them waving and dancing, and it went on for hours. It was spectacular. I should note that the colours were not quite as brilliant as the camera makes them seem, since modern cellphone cameras enhance the available light, but they were pretty close. An amazing night.
