Photos: Northern Lights visible above the Netherlands last night
The Northern Lights were visible in several places in Northern Netherlands on Monday night. Several locals managed to capture beautiful photos of the natural phenomenon, posting them online from Friesland and Noord-Holland.
Many parts of the Netherlands were shrouded in cloud cover, with intermittent rain on Monday evening. In other areas, the Northern Lights are difficult to see as the result of local light pollution. That said, the phenomenon was also visible in the Netherlands on several nights in February and April.
The Northern Lights are identifiable by green, blue, pink and violet bands that appear in the sky after electrons traveling rapidly reach Earth's atmosphere. "The lights we see in the night sky are in actual fact caused by activity on the surface of the Sun. Solar storms on our star's surface give out huge clouds of electrically charged particles. These particles can travel millions of miles, and some may eventually collide with the Earth," according to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.
"Most of these particles are deflected away, but some become captured in the Earth’s magnetic field, accelerating down towards the north and south poles into the atmosphere."
