The northern lights you saw last night were caused by charged particles from the Sun slamming into Earth’s upper atmosphere and making atmospheric gases glow, likely boosted by a recent burst of stronger solar activity.

What causes the northern lights?

When the Sun is active, it throws out streams of charged particles in the solar wind, sometimes intensified by events like coronal mass ejections or fast solar wind streams from “coronal holes.”

Earth’s magnetic field guides these particles toward the polar regions, where they collide with atoms and molecules high in the atmosphere, exciting them and making them emit light in those classic green, pink, and sometimes red auroral curtains.

Why they were strong last night

Forecasts for January 8–9, 2026, showed a minor (G1) geomagnetic storm triggered by a combination of fast solar wind and at least one glancing coronal mass ejection aimed at Earth.

This disturbance in Earth’s magnetic field pushed the auroral oval farther south than usual, which is why many people across northern U.S. states and higher latitudes had a better-than-normal chance to see the northern lights last night.

What the colors mean

Different colors come from different gases and altitudes in the atmosphere.

Green, the most common, usually comes from oxygen around 100–150 km up, while reds can come from higher-altitude oxygen and purples or blues from nitrogen, giving the sky that painted look people describe in photos and stories.

Is this a trend right now?

Auroras have been more frequent and more widespread recently because the Sun is in an active phase of its roughly 11‑year solar cycle, increasing the number of flares, coronal mass ejections, and high‑speed solar wind streams.

That means nights like last night, where auroras dip farther south and light up social media and forum discussions, are expected to stay relatively common over the next couple of years.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.