Northern Lights dazzle in parts of Michigan

Folks in upper Lower Michigan and the Upper Peninsula were treated to a vivid curtain of color from the aurora borealis on Thursday night.

"Take a look outside tonight," the National Weather Service in Marquette, Michigan, said on Facebook with a photo of the Northern Lights display.

Viewers responded by posting their own photos including from Escanaba, Bellaire and Ishpeming.

The weather service hours earlier had warned the aurora might be visible because of clear skies in Upper Michigan.

The Northern Lights are astronomical phenomena called polar lights, or aurora polaris, according to the Library of Congress astronomy web page.

"The origin of the aurora begins on the surface of the sun when solar activity ejects a cloud of gas. Scientists call this a coronal mass ejection," it said. Or, as businessinsider.com referred to it, a big hole in the sun blasted massive solar winds into the Earth's atmosphere for the blitz of color that could be seen as far south from Washington to Michigan.

Once it reaches Earth, "it collides with the Earth’s magnetic field," producing charged particles that receive an energy boost in the Earth's upper atmosphere, where they collide with oxygen and nitrogen atoms, and produce "dazzling auroral light."

"This field is invisible, and if you could see its shape, it would make Earth look like a comet with a long magnetic ‘tail’ stretching a million miles behind Earth in the opposite direction of the sun."

For the ordinary Michiganian, though, it's just a pretty scene in the night sky.