Aurora borealis events occur when a "blast of solar material and strong magnetic fields" from the sun interact with the atoms and molecules in Earth's outer atmosphere, Shawn Dahl, coordinator for NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center, told ABC News. This interaction causes the atoms in Earth's atmosphere to glow, creating a spectrum of color in t

The northern lights, or aurora borealis – and their southern hemisphere counterpart, the southern lights, or aurora australis – are "the last step of processes" from energy that originates from the sun, Elizabeth Macdonald, a space physicist with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, told ABC News. ufabet  

For the next year or more, the likelihood of seeing the northern lights, also known as the aurora borealis, will increase as Earth remains in the solar maximum of the current solar cycle, when more sunspots with the intense magnetic activity are expected, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Weather Prediction Cen