DUANE SHERRILLContributor

In what for many may be an once-in-a-lifetime experience, the northern skies in Middle Tennessee glowed with the majesty of the aurora borealis Friday evening thanks to a massive solar storm, sending people into their backyards to catch a glimpse of the rare phenomenon and capture pictures of the celestial wonder on their cameras.

The “northern lights” as they are commonly called, made an appearance as far south as Alabama, South Carolina and Mississippi. The lights were visible so far south due to a strong G4 geomagnetic storm. As for why the lights appeared so far south, NASA explained that the solar winds from the Sun’s major coronal mass ejection forced charged elections and protons into the Earth’s magnetic field. They were then directed to either pole, in the case of the norther hemisphere, being the North Pole. That fact is why the aurora borealis is only normally viewable in the Arctic Circle or in the more extreme northern latitudes. The higher the intensity of the solar storm, the further south it can be seen in the northern hemisphere.

The solar storm that brought the light show is the first time the northern lights have been viewable in Tennessee since 2005 when another major solar storm gave the Volunteer State a similar show. Unlike 2005, most viewers had cellphones this time which made the lights easier to view. The color of the hue which was viewable is according to the location in the atmosphere. If oxygen and nitrogen are “excited by the incoming particles” at the same altitude, we can see blue aurora, NASA explains. Slight lower, 60 miles and below, an interaction with nitrogen will cause pink northern lights. Above 120 miles, interactions with oxygen spark red aurora.

While dazzling to the eye, the root cause of the northern lights can be damaging to satellite communications and other electronics. Back during the late 1800s a major solar storm took out telegraph communications across the country.