The reason for this brilliant display is the sun, which shot a giant eruption of charged particles toward Earth on Sunday. The colorful Northern Lights, or aurora borealis, appear when electrically charged particles from the sun interact with molecules in Earth's atmosphere. Northern Lights may appear unusually far southTypically these dazzling green, red, pink, and purple lights only appear around the Arctic Circle, or around the South Pole (there it's called the aurora australis). That's because our planet's magnetic field lines channel the steady stream of particles, called the "solar wind," to the poles. AdvertisementAdvertisementWhere the aurora might appear tonightThe below map of the Space Weather Prediction Center's aurora forecast shows where late-night or early-morning sky watchers might be lucky enough to see the Northern Lights.

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Persons: Dean Pesnell, Keith Strong, Lockheed Martin, Mike Hapgood, there's Organizations: Service, NASA, Dynamics, Lockheed, NOAA, Prediction Center, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Administration Locations: Wall, Silicon, New York , Illinois, Oregon