The photos were taken by the Agency’s AuroraMax Observatory, where a live camera turns on automatically once the Sun sets below the horizon in Yellowknife. This year, the imager captured the northern lights above the observatory, via its Twitter feed.
The images below show early highlights from 2013, including several auroras caused by a coronal mass ejection (a massive burst of charged particles from the sun) that approached Earth on March 17.
Areas such as Sweden and Norway, Iceland and Finland, Alaska and Canada’s Northwest Territories are prime viewing areas for the northern lights, because that’s where the interactions between Earth’s poles and the sun’s geomagnetic storms are strongest, as NBC News explains.
More images of the light display also known as aurora borealis can be found on Spaceweather.com’s gallery page.
