(Jan-Michael Stump/Record-Eagle via Associated Press) - The northern lights shine over Michigan on Monday night.
If you were up WAY past your bedtime Monday night, you may have seen a light display more spectacular than the fireworks on the Fourth of July.
That’s because a huge part of the United States, including the Washington area and states as far west as California and as far south as Georgia, got a rare glimpse of the northern lights.
The sky turned an eerie pinkish-green as a result of an enormous solar storm.
The nighttime light display, also known as the aurora borealis (pronounced uh-roar-uh boar-ee-alice) was caused by the solar storm that compressed, or squeezed, the magnetic field around the Earth. That allowed electrically charged particles from the solar wind to get as close as 22,000 miles from Earth.
It’s far more common to see the northern lights in areas that are, well, farther north, such as the Arctic Circle or Alaska.
When such storms occur in the Southern Hemisphere, they’re called the aurora australis, or the southern lights.
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