Photos: Northern lights captured throughout Colorado, Denver metro area

DENVER (KDVR) — The aurora borealis, aka the northern lights, were visible throughout much of northern Colorado on Thursday night as a severe geomagnetic storm sent coronal mass ejections toward Earth.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center, the storm caused a major disruption in the Earth’s magnetic field, resulting in swaths of beautiful colors over U.S. cities.

Just as predicted, the geomagnetic storm created some lights over Colorado on Wednesday night, but the real show was Thursday night due to a Kp level and high G-scale level. The Kp index measures the disturbance of Earth’s magnetic field, and the G-scale is the NOAA’s version of that index.

NOAA says that different auroral colors come from different atmospheric heights that are activated. For example, the green aurora from oxygen “in the ¹ S state” typically occurs 80 to 250 miles above the surface of Earth. NOAA said the less common color is a deep red, which is what occurs when atomic oxygen has been excited to the singlet D state. Other colors come from other molecules, like nitrogen.

The most common auroral color is green. “Sunlit” auroras occur near sunrise or sunset, NOAA explained, and can have a purplish color at the top of the rays.

While the northern lights exist nearly all the time, according to NOAA, you might not always have such a good view. In fact, the forecast for Friday night has a much lower chance of seeing the lights this far south, as the storm begins to lessen.

This is part of the 11-year solar activity cycle. During the active period of 4-5 years near solar maximum , you could be more likely to see these types of flares and activity. However, the biggest solar flares tend to occur at the end of the solar maximum period, as solar activity lessens.

Did you capture Thursday’s northern lights over Colorado? Send us your photos: Tips@Kdvr.com .

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