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Night skies came aglow on Thursday with the shimmering palette of the northern lights, or the aurora borealis if you prefer.
Above rooftops in Brooklyn and along the shores of Maine, amid Scottish trees and between Russian monuments to artistry, human eyes looked up, surprised to spot colorful bands of chemistry dancing in the dark. Forecasts from space weather watchers in the United States suggested that the show could be seen as far south as Alabama. It may linger through Friday evening in states farther north, closer to their usual habitat, with some visibility expected from the lower Midwest to Oregon.
These lights started with giant explosions on the surface of the sun, known as coronal mass ejections, which send streams of energetic particles into space. When these particles cross Earth’s orbit, they create a disturbance in our planet’s magnetic field, known as a geomagnetic storm.
When the storm is strong enough, the light show that people call the northern lights or aurora borealis and that is usually most visible near the North Pole appears closer to the Equator than usual. The lights brighten the night’s dark depths with shades of neon greens, purples and pinks.
The sun’s activity ebbs and flows on an 11-year cycle, and right now, it is approaching a solar maximum. The solar outburst that caused Thursday night’s lights was a result of a coronal mass ejection on Tuesday night that reached Earth’s atmosphere on Thursday night, traveling at a speed of 1.5 million miles per hour.
This space weather is monitored using telescopes in space and other instruments by experts at a center within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Space Weather Prediction Center classifies these storms on a “G” scale of 1 to 5, with G1 being minor and G5 being extreme. They classified the storm that caused Thursday’s lights as G4, or “severe.” The outburst that caused northern lights in May was listed as a G5.
The most extreme storms can cause widespread blackouts and damage to infrastructure on Earth. Satellites may also have trouble orienting themselves or sending or receiving information during these events.
On Thursday, the primary effect seemed to be painted skies.
The sky shifted from red to green hues as a large ship and other watercraft passed by a body of water in Portland, Maine.
Stars shined above a line of trees and against the lilac backdrop of the night sky by Haraldsted Lake, north of Ringsted, Denmark.
The northern lights are usually most visible near the North Pole, but this burst of energy brought colors to places much farther south, such as Rouans, in western France.
Even in urban areas illuminated by light from apartments, streetlamps and automobiles, like New York City, the sky became the main attraction on Thursday evening. The purplish tint seemed to hover above buildings in Queens.
A light orange haze moved across the night sky and over the streetlights in Mauchline, Scotland.
The sky above Kyiv, Ukraine, glowed red-orange above a gray haze.
A burst of color, red and green, flashed above Holy Island in Northumberland, in northeastern England.
Tall art pieces stood in dark contrast to the sky, tinged in light hues of purple at a park in Nikola-Lenivets in the Kaluga region of western Russia.
The aurora borealis made the sky deep red above the portico at the Plymouth Harbor, in Plymouth, Mass.
A neighborhood still without electricity, after damage caused by Hurricane Helene, became a bucolic setting for a view of the northern lights in Asheville, N.C.
Water by a gulf glinted with the reflections of the aurora borealis in Gdynia, Poland.
The horizon glowed scarlet and bright green above the road ahead in Lietzen, about 40 miles east of Berlin.
Reporting and editing by Clinton Cargill, Brent Lewis, Kenneth Chang, Katrina Miller, Víctor Manuel Ramos and Michael Roston.
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