Timelapse video shows northern lights glittering from the top of New Hampshire mountain
Skies over the U.S. were once again treated to views of the aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights
The Mount Washington Observatory of New Hampshire captured a timelapse of the phenomena in the wee hours of Monday morning, catching the greenish-blue colors that blanketed the state's sky.
"Time-lapse of the aurora as seen from the summit earlier this morning," reads a post shared by the observatory. "The lights on the right side correspond to Berlin, N.H. and the lights on the left side correspond to Lancaster, N.H. The center of the video corresponds to roughly due north."
Auroras of different colors appeared over other states, as well, with some images from Ithaca in upstate New York showcasing a more pinkish-orange pallet.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted late last week that coronal mass ejections – clouds of plasma and charged particles – making their way toward Earth would drive a geomagnetic storm that could make the auroras visible from northern and upper Midwest states, from New York to Idaho.
NOAA had been tracking three coronal mass ejections last week, two that erupted from the sun on Wednesday and one Thursday from a solar flare. All were expected to arrive over the weekend, according to NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center's forecast discussion, coinciding with the Perseid meteor shower.
The NOAA forecast model has predicted that the lights could again be viewable in multiple states on Monday night.
What are the northern lights?
The northern lights are a luminous glow seen around the magnetic poles of the northern and southern hemispheres, according to the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute. Known for creating ribbons of colorful light in the night sky, the aurora borealis are polar lights, or aurora polaris, that appear in the northern hemisphere.
The southern hemisphere has its own polar lights known as the southern lights, or aurora australis, which create their own dazzling display.
Put simply, auroras are a result of the sun interacting with the Earth’s atmosphere. A collision between electrically charged particles from the sun and gases in Earth’s atmosphere produces a series of minuscule flashes that appear like moving lights in the sky.
The charged particles are pulled toward the North and South poles due to Earth’s magnetic field.
While that magnetic field usually protects the earth from solar winds, the winds can occasionally get strong enough to bypass the field, allowing particles and gases in the magnetosphere to interact and generate the colorful displays, according to the Geophysical Institute and the Canadian Space Agency.
Contributing: Eric Lagatta, USA TODAY