Maritimers take stunning, colourful photos of northern lights

First at Five: Northern Lights Show Sky-watchers were out in full force over the weekend – capturing the brilliance of the Aurora Borealis.

Maritimers were busy taking photos of the aurora borealis Sunday night and early Monday morning.

The northern lights made their appearance across Canada and the northern United States due to a geomagnetic storm, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The NOAA issued geomagnetic storm watches Sunday afternoon after a moderate solar flare erupted from the sun “expelling a billion tons of superheated magnetized gas.”

The storm watch said the ejection, which is known as a coronal mass ejection, reached Earth earlier and stronger than expected.

“The northern lights are caused when the sun sends charge particles through interplanetary space and those charge particles are interacting with the earth’s magnetic fields and the earth’s atmosphere,” said Tiffany Fields, an astronomy technician at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax.

“A coronal mass ejection came streaming from the sun on April 21 and it takes a couple of days for those particles to get to earth.”

The NOAA said Monday morning the storm showed signs of weakening.

The Space Weather Prediction Center branch of the NOAA has only a minor geomagnetic storm forecast for Monday night/Tuesday morning, making it much less likely to spot the aurora.

CTV Atlantic viewers shared their photos of the storm’s result -- a colourful night sky, full of shades of purple and green.