I have no idea. In all the years of going to Sturgis, we only witnessed the Northern Lights once. I don't know what causes the Northern Lights to occur - if it is just the right combination of weather conditions or what - but it sure was spectacular to watch! 
"Northern lights originate from our sun. During large explosions and flares, huge quantities of solar particles are thrown out of the sun and into deep space. These plasma clouds travel through space with speeds varying from 300 to 1000 kilometers per second.
But even with such speeds (over a million kilometer per hour), it takes these plasma clouds two to three days to reach our planet. When they are closing in on Earth, they are captured by Earth's magnetic field (the magnetosphere) and guided towards Earth's two magnetic poles; the geomagnetic south pole and the geomagnetic north pole.
Northern lights occur as a result of solar particles colliding with the gases in earth's atmosphere
On their way down towards the geomagnetic poles, the solar particles are stopped by Earth's atmosphere, which acts as an effective shield against these deadly particles.
When the solar particles are stopped by the atmosphere, they collide with the atmospheric gases present, and the collision energy between the solar particle and the gas molecule is emitted as a photon - a light particle. And when you have many such collisions, you have an aurora - lights that may seem to move across the sky.
In order for an observer to actually see the aurora with the naked eye, about a 100 million photons are required."
Author
Topic: Lunar Eclipse (Read 3542 times)