Beacon for Northern lights
Astronomy North installs five mini-lighthouses around town that will indicate solar activity
Candace Thomson
Northern News Services
Published Friday, October 25, 2013
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Yellowknife will have something other than the aurora lighting up the night sky starting tonight.
Five concrete lighthouses have been installed this week by Astronomy North at high-traffic areas of the city which will shine either blue, green, or red, depending on solar activity. The non-profit organization calls the initiative the Northern Lighthouse Project.
"On Friday night, Yellowknife will become the first community in the world to have its own space weather alert system - an early warning system for geomagnetic storms," said James Pugsley, president of Astronomy North.
These storms determine the intensity of the Aurora Borealis, or Northern lights.
Blue means gentle or weak activity and dim aurora, green means there could be periods of active aurora and red is reserved for special geomagnetic storms that cause vibrant, intense auroral activity.
A geomagnetic storm is expected to occur this weekend, Pussley said.
"What happens during a geomagnetic storm is that the auroras make pillars of red that are so majestic, so different than our common aurora," Pugsley said. "These are events that happen for many hours."
Each lighthouse has its own designated light keeper - a young volunteer from Astronomy North - who will go and manually change the colour whenever there is a geomagnetic storm in the forecast.
"If you're driving home from work, we've picked locations that we thought would be good for viewing," said Pugsley. "You look at the beacon, and it'll tell you what the forecast is looking like for tonight."
The goal of the project is to raise awareness on active evenings for viewing the Northern lights for both tourists and Yellowknifers alike. In the interest of attracting tourists to the project, five businesses in Yellowknife have sponsored the project by renting one of the lighthouses for the year.
The Gallery of the Midnight Sun, Sushi North, the Northern Frontier Visitors Centre, Northland Utilities and Kingland Ford all have lighthouses posted either on top of or near their businesses.
Maya March, who works at the gallery, said she was excited and proud to have the lighthouse outside the business.
"It's a conversation we constantly have with tourists, asking where they can get info on how they can see the lights," March said. "To have a tool that will tell them will be useful for us and for tourists as well - and it will be a thing of pride for Yellowknifers."
The lighthouses weigh about 136 kg each, and are being rented by businesses in the area for $1,000 per year. It cost about $5,000 to get the lighthouses constructed.
Pugsley said the rent from the first year will go to paying off those initial costs, but afterward, there is a bigger project.
"With the support of our sponsors and partners, Northern Lighthouses will raise $20,000 over the next five years to support the design and construction of two commemorative Northern Lighthouses - the Con Lighthouse and the Giant Lighthouse," Pugsley said.
Until then, Astronomy North will measure local response to the lighthouses. Next summer, the organization will give local artists the opportunity to paint the lighthouses with Northern scenes.
Currently, the lighthouses are painted in a striped white and green to reflect that the most common auroral colour is green in and around Yellowknife.
"What we want is for people to know that at 68 degrees magnetic latitude, there is a community so perfectly positioned under the aurora oval, that whether it's aurora minimum or aurora maximum, there is aurora almost every night," Pugsley said.
"Yellowknife is one of the few places on Earth where the sky has an impact on the economy."
