The northern lights illuminated the night sky across Canada on Thursday with a dazzling display of greens and pinks.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) predicted a major geomagnetic storm would reach Earth Thursday and Friday, triggered by solar activity on the sun.
The storm, a disturbance of the planet’s magnetic field, produced moving lights in the sky across the country.
While northern lights are a phenomenon normally reserved for northern skies, they could be seen as far south as the Vancouver and Victoria areas on Thursday night.
During the storm, solar particles are scattered by explosions of energy on the sun’s surface called coronal mass ejections. When those particles interact with elements in the Earth’s atmosphere, they cause distinct colours in the sky.
