Last week’s Northern Lights extravaganza that delighted legions of Michigan skywatchers was visible from the International Space Station, NASA said.
NASA shared a video of the view from the space station as green wisps danced across Earth’s atmosphere on Thursday, March 23.
“The northern lights as seen from the International Space Station,” NASA said on Instagram. “The video begins with the green hues of the northern lights dancing across the skies of North America. The curvature of the Earth is visible where the auroras in the atmosphere meet the darkness of space. As the video continues it moves further southeast across North America, revealing the bright lights of cities across the Midwest United States.”
RELATED: Pilot gets amazing Northern Lights photos, says Michigan’s sky better than Alaska, Iceland
The Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis, is generally known for its green and purple hues. But on March 23, Michiganders saw shades of red and yellow in a rare display.
The bright lights of the aurora are collisions between electrically charged particles from the sun and the earth’s atmosphere.
“As these air particles shed the energy they picked up from the collision, each atom starts to glow in a different color — causing the brilliant ribbons of light which weave across Earth’s northern or southern polar regions,” NASA explained on Instagram.
RELATED: Northern Lights visible across Lower Michigan sky, could be ‘seen with the naked eye’
Typically, auroras are visible closer to Earth’s poles because that’s where the planet’s magnetosphere is weakest, but last week they the lights were visible as far south as Virginia and Arizona, NASA said.
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