AMHERST, Mass. (WWLP) – It’s something we don’t see that often here in western Massachusetts, but some people were lucky to have seen the Northern Lights right here in our area Thursday night.

If you were up very late Thursday night or very early Friday morning, you might have seen the Northern Lights. Here are pictures of the Northern Lights spotted in Amherst sent in by Kalpesh Krishna.

You can see that reddish and greenish color. And what that was caused by was an unexpected strong geomagnetic storm.  Energy particles from the sun hit the Earth’s upper atmosphere and the Earth’s magnetic field directs those particles to the poles. That created a curtain of red and green light that some people were very lucky to see early this morning.