There was a lot of media coverage of the biggest solar storm in 6 years yesterday. Doomsayers were claiming the world’s electricity would be knocked out and that we’d all be burned to death by radiation. This all turned out to be a lot of hot air. What did happen though, thanks to the storm, was a spectacular display of the Northern Lights. Full gallery after the jump.

Wikipedia defines an aurora as follows:

An aurora (plural: auroras or aurorae) is a natural light display in the sky particularly in the high latitude (Arctic and Antarctic) regions, caused by the collision of energetic charged particles with atoms in the high altitude atmosphere (thermosphere). The charged particles originate in the magnetosphere and solar wind and, on Earth, are directed by the Earth’s magnetic field into the atmosphere.

And this is the explosion on the sun that caused the magnificent green phoenix to rise:

That’s the sun. Having an explosion.

The effect of this flare is the solar storm we were warned about yesterday, but which made sure that the kids in the north had something awesome to stare at. Check out this gallery:

[Source: Daily Mail]