Northern Lights over Duluth

Here’s what you missed Wednesday if you lived in that fancy metro area well south of Duluth.

The Washington Post explains what’s going on here.

Wednesday night’s aurora was particularly vibrant because of the position of the sun’s “coronal holes,” which send high-speed particles hurtling away from the sun’s surface.

Right now, the holes are near the suns’s equator, meaning that the particles head out along the same line of latitude as Earth instead of “up” and “down” into the emptiness of space.

It also helps that this is happening in autumn, which, according to Britain’s national weather service, is a better time for auroras, though we don’t quite understand why.