Unidentifiable Light

One night I was either up really late, or was woken up very late (can't remember which) and I looked outside and saw this, so I took a pic. Anyone care to guess what it could be?



[Edited on 24-7-2003 by MessedUpAnnie]

Well you live in Canada, so it could be the aurora, or Nothern Lights. Solar radiation gets trapped in the high atmosphere of Earth, it gets concentrated around the north and south pole. There it 'collides' with O2 and O3 molocules which causes the beautiful light in all kinds of colors.
Are you sure you haven't seen this before? I heard it's quite normal in Canada...

Aurora in Alberta Canada 13 Aug 2000 at about 0200 MDT - Energy and particles from the Sun impacts Earth's Magnetosphere and generates lovely Aurora and Natural-Radio Signals - the radio sounds of "Space Weather."

perhaps it was someone near by having a firework display

Zion Mainframe ...

Thanks for your response. I never thought of that, but to be honest, I have never seen the Northern Lights. I live in BC and my understanding is that you can see it from Alberta quite well. We go up north camping in the middle of nowhere every summer and I still haven't seen them so I doubt this is them. Also, the light appears to be coming from the ground upwords, doesn't it?

Pocket ...

It for sure couldn't have been fireworks .. there was no flashing of the lights. It was solid, non blinking and was there for quite a while. It never disappeared and I eventually went back to bed.

Any new sports ground/ car parks/ factories etc been/ being built nearby there floodlights can be seen for miles sometimes.

I agree with JohnB.
Whatever it is, it seems to be ground based.
It looks like floodlights to me.

It reminds me of the bright orange glow emanating from the greenhouses in rural Netherlands... Mostly Zuid Holland. It used to keep me awake sometimes, because I like to sleep when it's pitch black...

Definatly ground based. I say look into what kind of chemicals and other things can be used to create greenish light. Then you might be able to form a hypothesis of what the hell caused em'.

Are there any industrial factories or anything around there? if so it could be just some gas or waste being disposed of? this is the only good explanation i can think of, other than what others have said, like floodlights etc.

Around my area about 10 years ago the sky was red every night because of a steel Facoty, Ravenscraig i think it was called.

Anyway, this light took up the whole sky in that direction and it looked like an apocalypse was coming!

regards
Jonathan