Why did we see the northern light in Kentucky, and when will we see them again?

RICHMOND, Ky. (LEX 18) — For two nights this week, the night sky held some unusual pink and green light as the northern lights came south.

“It's only during the really big storms, what they call the geomagnetic storms,” said Dr. Mark Pitts from Eastern Kentucky University. “For people who are as far south of a latitude as we are, being able to see the aurora requires that these storms be particularly intense.”

Dr. Pitts is a professor of physics and astronomy at EKU, and he says these colors are caused by electrically charged particles from the sun crashing into the Earth’s upper atmosphere.

“Being that it is around solar maximum, this is something that we can expect to happen at this time in what we call the solar cycle,” he added.

The solar maximum is the peak of the sun’s approximat