CELPIP Reading Part 3 Practice Test: Northern Lights Over Yellowknife

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For thousands of years, people in the North have watched curtains of green and violet light ripple across the winter sky. Today, scientists understand that the aurora borealis, or northern lights, begins about 150 million kilometres away, on the surface of the sun. The sun constantly releases a stream of electrically charged particles known as the solar wind. When these particles reach Earth, most are turned away by the planet’s magnetic field, but some are channelled along invisible field lines toward the North and South Poles. There, they collide with gas molecules in the upper atmosphere and release energy as light. The colour depends on which gas is struck and at what height. Oxygen about 100 to 250 kilometres up produces the familiar yellow-green glow, while oxygen at greater heights creates rarer red tones. Nitrogen adds touches of blue and purple, often seen along the lower edges of a display.

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The strength of the lights rises and falls with the sun’s activity, which follows a cycle of roughly eleven years. During the peak of a cycle, powerful eruptions on the sun can push the lights far south of their usual range, and residents of cities such as Toronto and Vancouver may suddenly find the sky above them glowing pink. Most of the time, however, the aurora is concentrated in a ring-shaped zone around the magnetic pole called the auroral oval. Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, sits almost directly beneath this oval. Combined with its flat landscape and dry, often cloudless winter climate, this location means the lights can be seen there on as many as 240 nights a year.

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These conditions have turned the small city into one of the world’s best-known aurora destinations. Visitors began arriving in significant numbers in the late 1980s, many of them from Japan, and today they come from across Asia, Europe and southern Canada. Local operators run nightly tours to viewing sites outside the city, where guests wait in heated cabins or canvas tents with hot chocolate and bannock until the sky comes alive. Because winter temperatures regularly fall below minus 30 degrees Celsius, many companies rent out insulated parkas, boots and mitts. Although most people picture the aurora above snowy fields, the late-summer season from mid-August to September is growing in popularity, since the lights can be watched reflecting off open lakes in far milder weather.

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The industry also faces challenges. Some longtime residents worry that crowded viewing sites and tour buses are changing the quiet character of lakes they once had to themselves. Others point to the lights’ cultural meaning. In Dene tradition, the aurora has been linked to the spirits of ancestors, and some elders feel visitors should be taught to treat it with respect rather than as a simple photo opportunity. In response, several Indigenous-owned tour companies now share stories and traditional knowledge alongside the viewing experience. Guides also advise visitors to leave city lights behind, check the aurora forecast, and keep spare camera batteries warm inside their jackets. Meanwhile, warmer winters have shortened the period when lakes freeze solidly enough for vehicles, making some popular viewing spots harder to reach.