Locals share amazing photos of Northern Lights

Three local residents shared their stunning photos of the display.  Amy Weber Hart got her pictures between 1:30-1:45 a.m., on Saturday. Tim Hendrix got some great shots from his backyard in Bolivar, as well as Marsha Barron with their cell phones. They all three shared their pictures on The Sanger Speaker FaceBook page.   The newer cell phone cameras are more sensitive to light than our eyes, they’re sometimes able to capture auroras we can’t see. People around the world were given the opportunity to witness a dazzling display of the Northern Lights after the Earth was impacted by a historic geomagnetic storm last Friday.

A historic geomagnetic storm that blasted Earth and gave millions of people the opportunity to witness a dazzling display of the Northern Lights as far south as Florida and Texas in the southern U.S. has finally started to wane.

The sky around the world was filled with brilliant colors of green, pink, purple and red from the Northern Lights on Friday and Saturday after a massive sunspot the width of 17 Earths spewed solar flares, leading to the geomagnetic storm activity reaching Level 5 "extreme" conditions.

Some North Texans got a chance to see the northern lights due to the rare extreme solar storm, but many are asking why the lights were pink instead of green. To explain, you have to know a bit about how auroras are formed.

When energized particles from the sun hit Earth’s upper atmosphere the planet’s magnetic field then directs the particles towards our poles.

When particles enter the atmosphere they then super-charge the electrons in the different gases. Those molecules then release the energy as light.

The different elements in the atmosphere that give off the light give off different colors.

Green is the most common color in an aurora because that is the color given off when there is a high concentration of oxygen.

An unusually strong solar storm hitting Earth was able to produce northern lights across parts of the U.S. and the world.

The lights in North Texas were very high in the atmosphere, where there is a low concentration of oxygen. That gave off the red and pink hue that some saw on Friday night.

If you are in an area seeing purples and blues, that is at a very low altitude, where the concentration of nitrogen is high.