Getaways

Chasing auroras

Wandering the roads of Charlevoix at night,
eyes turned northward.

Chasing auroras

Because we’re always on the hunt for images, we always have our eye on app notifications and alerts and groups like Northern Lights Alert. Though we’ve seen and captured the green and purple curtains of light before, what we’ve never seen with the naked eye is the sky of Charlevoix come alive as it did in May and August of last year. The Canadian Space Agency notes that 2024 was an exceptional year for observing these celestial phenomena, given that the sun was then experiencing a peak of activity, at the tail end of an 11-year cycle. Still within the time frame known as the solar maximum, 2025 promises to light up the northern skies, as solar flares continue to eject particles that travel into space on the solar winds towards Earth’s magnetic field, which then diverts these particles to the poles. When they come into contact with gases in the earth’s atmosphere, charged particles (protons and electrons) create bright flashes of light, the colour of which is influenced by altitude, and the type of gas encountered. Red and green occur owing to the presence of oxygen, blue and violet to the presence of hydrogen and helium, and pink to the presence of nitrogen. On the night of May 10 to 11, 2024, the sky looked like a disco dancefloor from one end of Charlevoix to the other, and a few months later, in August, the Perseids and auroras danced together in the night sky. Check these pages for a few of our best shots; that time when, for once, insomnia had charms of its own!