An unusual display of Northern Lights was seen in the skies of North America on Saturday night with hues of pink and purple along with green. According to the BBC, the event was categorised as a "severe geomagnetic storm" due to a large hole in the sun's corona that seriously damaged the Earth's magnetic field.
According to the BBC, from California to New York, the aurora Borealis was seen dancing green brilliance.
Social media is flooded with photos of videos of the aurora borealis.
As per NASA, if you're ever near the North or South Pole there are beautiful light shows in the sky frequently. These lights are called auroras. If you're near the North Pole, it is called an aurora borealis or northern lights. If you're near the South Pole, it is called an aurora australis, or the southern lights.
Bill Murtagh, programme co-ordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Weather and Prediction Center, told the BBC that the Northern Lights phenomenon experienced last night was due to "several eruptions on the sun", which released high energy particles that collided with Earth's atmosphere "like a big magnet getting shot out of the sun".
"When these clouds of particles and magnetic fields from the sun hit the Earth's magnetic fields, we see these high energy particles will interact with the Earth's upper atmosphere and that will create the Northern Lights," he added.
Though the Sun doesn't send the same amount of energy all the time, there is a constant stream of solar wind and there are solar storms. During a coronal mass ejection, a kind of solar storm, the sun burps out a huge bubble of electrified gas that travel through space at high speeds.
According to experts the location of the oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere determines the colours visible in the sky. Nitrogen and oxygen are the main sources of green, red, and blue, respectively.