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A video capturing an incredible northern lights scene from the sky has gone viral on TikTok.
The clip was posted by Christian H. Nielsen (@christiannielsenmedia) and has amassed over 234,000 views since it was shared on November 13. The caption says the footage was taken “on the night between November 11th and 12th,” while the poster was flying home from Iceland, “just as multiple solar flares had hit Earth’s atmosphere, causing a ‘severe geomagnetic storm’…”
The footage begins with an aerial view of a night sky through the window of a moving plane, as text overlaid on it says: “…I was hoping to see the northern lights.”
The text adds: “At first I couldn’t see much…but then colors started to show, and I pulled out my camera (X-T3, handheld, 16 mm, f2.8 ss1”, ISO4000).”
The footage later shows an ethereal display of green and red northern lights sprawled across the sky above clouds.
A caption shared with the post reads: “Once in a lifetime? Probably…I feel very lucky. Peak aurora year. Peak aurora month. Window seat facing north. I usually share my then & now photos, but this was too extraordinary not to share…”
The northern lights, also known as aurora borealis, are the result of electrons colliding with the upper reaches of the Earth’s atmosphere.
“In these collisions, the electrons transfer their energy to the atmosphere thus exciting the atoms and molecules to higher energy states. When they relax back down to lower energy states, they release their energy in the form of light. This is similar to how a neon light works,” says the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Last week, the NOAA issued a G4 geomagnetic storm watch—the second-highest level—due to three recent solar ejections. On November 11, the northern lights were visible across much of the United States, reaching as far south as Alabama and New Mexico.
The northern lights can often be viewed “somewhere on Earth” from either just after sunset or just before sunrise. They are not visible during daylight hours.
The northern lights usually form from around 50 to 310 miles above the Earth’s surface, but can also be seen from as much as 620 miles away “when the aurora is bright and if conditions are right,” says the NOAA.
The Space Weather Prediction Center said that the Earth’s magnetic field “guides the electrons such that the aurora forms two ovals approximately centered at the magnetic poles. During major geomagnetic storms these ovals expand away from the poles such that aurora can be seen over most of the United States.”
“When space weather activity increases and more frequent and larger storms and substorms occur, the aurora extends equatorward. During large events, the aurora can be observed as far south as the US, Europe, and Asia,” the center said.
Newsweek has contacted the original poster via TikTok. This video has not been independently verified.
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