Northern lights dazzle in the night sky across B.C.

The northern lights illuminated the night sky across Canada on Thursday with a dazzling display of greens and pinks.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) predicted a major geomagnetic storm would reach Earth Thursday and Friday, triggered by solar activity on the sun.

The storm, a disturbance of the planet’s magnetic field, produced moving lights in the sky across the country.

While northern lights are a phenomenon normally reserved for northern skies, they could be seen as far south as the Vancouver and Victoria areas on Thursday night.

Purple light in the sky above a dark bay. — The northern lights from Saxe Point Park in Esquimalt, B.C., on Thursday night. (Madeline Green/CBC)

Green lights above the Lions Gate Bridge — Greens were dominant in the aurora above North Vancouver. (Srinivas Raghavan)

A band of green in the sky above the silhouette of mountains. — The northern lights above Stanley Park. (Darius Mahdavi/CBC)

Hues of green and pink above the North Vancouver skyline. — The aurora shimmers above Vancouver. (Tanushi Bhatnagar/CBC)

Pink and purple light in the night sky — The northern lights lit up the sky above Kamloops. (Marcella Bernardo/CBC)

During the storm, solar particles are scattered by explosions of energy on the sun’s surface called coronal mass ejections. When those particles interact with elements in the Earth’s atmosphere, they cause distinct colours in the sky.

Green lights dominate the sky above the silhouette of mountains — The aurora seen from Cherry Creek, just outside Kamloops. (Vicki Baerg)

Green and purple lights in a night sky — Aurora borealis over Hudson’s Hope, B.C. (Jeremy Mahon)

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