Exeter CommunityViews Aurora Borealis

By ERIN HAN, SHAY KASHIF, JINMIN LEE, LILY RAMPE, and FORREST ZENG

    On Thursday, Oct. 10, members of the Academy community revelled under the rare lights of an Aurora Borealis. For around 90 minutes, the night sky turned hues of green and red, bursting occasionally to the delight of students and faculty alike.

    Many students gathered in front of buildings and took photos. Another aurora event occurred last spring, but students noticed the stronger red tones in the sky this time. The Aurora Borealis happens in the northern parts of the globe when the sun’s particles interact with the Earth’s atmosphere.

Sean Richard / The Exonian

    An Aurora Borealis occurs when a solar flare releases electrons and protons as a coronal mass ejection, which hits the Earth’s atmosphere and excites the gasses releasing photons of light from green to red. Director of the Grainger Observatory and Instructor in Science John Blackwell explained, “The cause of this coronal mass ejection was a strong X-class solar flare on the Sun from a very active sunspot group. The colors are caused by the excitation of different atoms in our upper atmosphere.”

    Physics Club co-head Sophia Jia added to Blackwell’s explanation: “The sun sometimes sheds particles in bursts, and the paths of those charged particles are affected by the Earth’s magnetic field. The different colors are consequences of interactions with different gasses of the atmosphere.”

    Leading up to the aurora, there had been a particularly large solar flare—a sudden explosion on the sun that released a burst of plasma and radiation. Major solar storms like these often precede auroras, according to Astronomy Club co-head Masaki Muneyoshi. “There was a huge solar flare a few days before Thursday, so the aurora wasn’t completely out of the blue—generally, you’ll have a couple hours of notice beforehand,” he said. “Exeter is relatively North, and the Sun’s 11-year activity cycle, called the solar cycle, is nearly at its peak right now, so auroras have been more common.”

    Auroras are more common in the northern poles of the earth due to the planet’s magnetic orientation, but due to the strength of the auroral storm, it was visible more south than usual. “When an auroral storm is strong enough, it can be seen at progressively more southern locations here in the northern hemisphere,” Blackwell said. “This was a strong storm!  Friends were reporting in from many locations further south including locations such as Arizona and Athens, Greece.”

    Blackwell compared this aurora to the one that occurred at Exeter last Spring.“This was a more intense aurora than the one that took place this May. That was a fine event, but the colors during this event were much more intense.”

Sean Richard / The Exonian

    Students and faculty were mesmerized by the unexpected appearance of the aurora. Blackwell described what he saw: “Emotionally, seeing the bright aurora is intense and awe-inspiring,” he said. “It’s an all-sky show of physics in nature and completely silent. This time, the intensity of the colors and their vividness was most notable with reds, greens, whites, and the many shapes: curtains, patches, rays, and coronas up at the zenith.”

    Prep Ava Kruttschnitt said, “I saw the Northern Lights mainly through my phone, because I couldn’t just see it with my naked eye. They were really pretty. I saw it with some of my friends right outside of Grill. I had never seen it before and I was really happy to be able to see it for the first time. I think it was just really surprising when I saw it through my phone camera and it was really gorgeous and unique.”

    Senior Varit Asavathiratham added, “I was with friends in EPAC when the aurora started. Once we realized it was visible we all ran outside to the Academic Quad to watch it.  We even moved past Phillips Hall and towards Swasey as the night went on. It was just incredible. The way it towered over the buildings on campus made it a beautiful sight to see.”

    “Although we saw the aurora last year in the spring term, it was late at night and not as clear as this year’s,” shared senior Jackson Lyle, co-head of Astronomy Club. “On Thursday, the sky was purely red, and I was pleasantly surprised. My love for astronomy made me appreciate the event more because I could understand the phenomenon. I remember last spring in Mr. Blackwell’s astronomy class when he explained the solar flares that caused such an instance.”

    Jia echoed, “If I remember correctly, you couldn’t really see the aurora with the naked eye last year. The aurora was mostly a really faint tint of green in the sky, whereas this one was much more obvious and red/pink.” She added, “It was really cool — I was just kind of in awe.”

    “It was very exciting,” said prep Annika Nystedt. “I could see the red hues quite clearly and subtle hints of green, too. It was the first time I ever saw the aurora.”

    “When I first saw it the entire sky was red,” added Physics Club co-head Michael Lu. “But then when I took a picture with my camera, there was kind of a ‘curtain’ of turquoise with it as well, which I could not see with my eyes at all.”

    Lu continued, “It reminded me of how when some ancient people saw the aurora, they thought the world was ending. I can see why they thought that now — it was very striking.”

    Dining hall staff member Keith Humphrey described, “The trees were peppered with red and green light.”

    The ephemeral beauty of this aurora was, for many Exonians, a substantial reminder of the spectacular nature of our universe. It seemed that, after an especially gloomy week of clouds and rain, it helped brighten the spirits of the school community.

    But even if they missed it this time around, students can expect to view other events like this over the next year. “The aurora will happen again, even though they are not generally predictable on a calendar-type basis,” Blackwell said. “This type of activity is more common when the Sun is at what astronomers call a ‘solar maximum,’ which takes place every 11 years. We happen to be at the peak of this cycle right now, and events like this could take place at any time over the next year. In short, keep looking up!”