The reason you’re seeing pictures of colorful lights in the sky right now is because our planet just went through the biggest solar storm in more than 20 years! Here’s what’s going on.

The sun often spews out super hot gas filled with charged particles. Luckily, Earth’s magnetic field protects us from them! But they can interact with gasses in our atmosphere, giving those molecules extra energy or “exciting” them – and as they relax back to their natural energy state, they release photons in different wavelengths or colors.

THAT’s what we see. We call it the aurora borealis, or Northern lights.
You can actually tell WHICH gas molecules got excited by the color!

We’re seeing the lights in way more places right now because we went through a big solar storm – but we were expecting it! Our Sun goes through cycles of about 11 years and we’re approaching another maximum right now.

These lights are a beautiful reminder of how Earth’s magnetic field protects us and allows life to prosper, and it’s so cool that more people got to see it.

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