Mesmerising auroras captured over Earth from space and on the ground

Astronaut Matthew Dominick filmed the phenomenon from the Dragon Endeavour spacecraft, while a Chicago photographer captured the lights dancing over the city.

The spectacle is rarely visible from populated areas 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.