Mesmerising Northern Lights captured over Chicago

The Northern Lights dancing across the sky above Chicago have been captured by a timelapse photographer on Monday night.

The phenomenon is rarely visible from the city due to light pollution.

A huge solar flare, the largest since 2017, has been spotted erupting from the Sun’s surface.

The Northern Lights are the result of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the sun, where solar storms form after flares and eruptions from active sunspots.

These CMEs send plasma and magnetic fields into space, sometimes ejecting billions of tons of material. When this reaches Earth’s magnetic field, the interaction creates the aurora borealis in the night sky.