Videos: U.S. Skies Get a Rare Glimpse of Northern Lights

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Monday night, cosmic lights illuminated the nighttime skies, sweeping across the nation from the very northern Canadian border to the southern states of Arkansas and Alabama, and to the eastern and western coasts.

Dazzling images of deep red and purple hues piercing the skies are flooding the Internet after a large mass of plasma hit Earth Monday night, causing a widespread display of auroras.

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“Wow, wow, wow! These were the best Northern Lights I’ve seen since 2004,” Shawn Malone, an onlooker said in a post on SpaceWeather.com. Observers snapped photos of the auroras in more than half of the U.S. states, a rarity for Northern Lights to stretch so far.  The geomagnetic storm is settling, but SpaceWeather.com advises stargazers to take advantage of the last of the celestial skies.

MORE: Captured Cosmos: The Best Videos of the Aurora Borealis