Stunning photos of the Aurora Borealis above the US

Last night, the sky above the US exploded with a light show typically reserved for other countries (and Alaska): Aurora Borealis, known as the Northern Lights. These displays of neon greens that resemble a cresting wave or a holographic light show from Mars actually happen year-round, but we only get to see them in late winter and early spring when the Arctic is darkest and the sky clearest.

On Wednesday night, social media lit up with images from the rare experience happening across the northwest states. 

The science behind Aurora Borealis is pretty interesting. The sun emits electrically charged particles that run into oxygen and nitrogen in the earth’s upper atmosphere. When enough of these celestial fender-benders occur, nitrogen will discharge a blue light and oxygen a greenish-yellow or even red one. The other colors you see are from these lights blending.

It’s rare to see the Northern Lights in the northwest, but last night’s show was courtesy of a strong geomagnetic storm from the sun. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration logged two eruptions on the sun’s surface earlier in the week, as reported by USA Today, that sent huge clouds of charged particles towards our planet. These coronal mass ejections sound impressive and let some of us host Aurora Borealis in our own sky rather than on the computer.

If you didn’t catch them last night, you can perhaps take comfort in the fact that the actual light show isn’t quite as spectacular as what you see with the naked eye. Camera have more photo receptors than our peepers, so the astounding colors captured on film may appear in real life more like fifty shades of gray. It’s also the case that the Northern Lights can deepen and become more impressive as the night wears on — and also that some people, depending on their vision, can see a better version of it even when standing next to someone else having a lesser experience. Moreover, some photographers keep their shutters open for 15 seconds or more, creating an image that benefits from the intake of far more light, and thus more color, than our own human eyes.

Here are the best photos we saw on social media this morning: 

In Idaho

In Montana 

In Puget Sound, Washington 

In central Washington 

From Montana

From Washington 

In North Dakota