The northern lights put on a spectacular show Thursday night due to a large geomagnetic storm. These photos were taken around 7:30 p.m. The NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center reported a G4 (severe) storm Oct. 10-11. According to the center, the event was due to large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the sun, called a coronoal mass ejection; the expulsions occurred Oct. 8 and arrived at Earth on Thursday at nearly 1.5 million miles per hour.