The northern lights in southern Alberta can grow richly chromatic and so bright they become visible even within city limits.
But for Harlan Thomas, 66, from Calgary, the surreal sights of aurora borealis where he photographs them hit their high note—often featuring colors that go beyond your standard emerald-green.
Monitoring the sun routinely for the solar storms that are the cause of the colorful lights, the retired engineer picked up on a coronal mass ejection—a burst of solar radiation—that was due to collide with Earth’s atmosphere last fall.
Mr. Harlan, who’s been aiming his lens skyward since 2013, then packed his Nikon D810 and 15-30 mm lens and set out for his “go-to” spot—Sibbald Pond, in the countryside west of Calgary—to capture what he calls “a first” for him.
It was a bright, pumpkin-orange display of the northern lights above the water’s reflective surface. “Upon arriving onsite, an aurora band had already formed,” Mr. Harlan told The Epoch Times. “About 30 minutes into the shoot, an auroral substorm began to impact, which caused the aurora to dance across the northern horizon.”
He described its color as a rare “ruby-orange” and its breadth as encompassing 40 degrees, adding that the spectacle lasted some 30 minutes.
Noting how this was different from anything he’d seen before, Mr. Harlan said he “felt in complete awe of what God can create.”
Trying to comprehend what his own eyes were telling him about the undulating hues before him, he said he thinks the orange was “a rare combination of red and green blend,” perhaps hydrogen and helium in the air, mixed with particles like atoms or electrons.
After taking the photos, he posted them online where they generated amazement from northern lights aficionados as far away as Asia. “The video of it went viral in Japan on Twitter,” he said.
His avid passion for auroral photography typically takes him traipsing as far as 180 miles within a radius around Calgary, he said. He’s captured the extraordinary, including “picket fence” auroras, the auroral corona, and the stable aurora red arch, or SAR.
“Photographing the aurora is a very difficult endeavor that takes a lot of patience, time, and knowledge of solar wind conditions,” he said, adding that his vocation first began with watching meteor showers as a youth with his best friend.
