Northern lights put on a stunning show in parts of southern Ontario ...

Parts of southern Ontario caught a rare glimpse of the northern lights, or aurora borealis, late Thursday and early Friday morning amid a “severe” geomagnetic storm that set the darkness ablaze across large swaths of North America.

Photographers and astronomy enthusiasts across the continent, and even from parts of Europe, took to social media, posting their footage of the dazzling light show.

Trevor Jones, a professional astrophotographer, captured the northern lights from his backyard in St. Catharines, Ont.

“With my naked eye, I was able to see the rippling green aurora in the sky, and my eyes weren’t even dark-adapted yet,” said Jones, who runs AstroBackyard. “I just opened up the front door and I could see them visually.”

Jones, who typically captures distant solar objects, hasn’t seen the northern lights in St. Catharines since 2011.

The phenomenon was likely caused by a burst of solar energy, also known as a coronal mass ejection, released by the sun around Monday, according to the U.S. government’s Space Weather Prediction Centre.

The storm, which began to peak just after midnight (eastern time) on Friday, was categorized by the centre as a level four (severe) event. Earlier on Wednesday, the Storm Weather Prediction Centre had only forecast a minor to moderate storm in their bulletin.

“Forecasters completely missed this one,” wrote astronomer Tony Phillips in a post for spaceweather.com.

“Magnetic fields in the wake of the CME(s) pried open a crack in Earth’s magnetosphere. Solar wind penetrated to fuel the storm. Earth’s ‘shields were down’ for almost 24 hours, allowing the storm to build to category G4,” Phillips wrote, adding that Friday’s storm was the most intense in nearly six years.

In addition to the auroras, some onlookers witnessed a phenomenon known as a strong thermal emission velocity enhancement (STEVE), which looks like an aurora but is not, Phillips noted.

“The phenomenon is caused by hot (3000C) ribbons of gas flowing through Earth’s magnetosphere at speeds exceeding 6 km/s,” he said. “These ribbons appear during strong geomagnetic storms, revealing themselves by their soft purple glow.”

The Space Weather Prediction Centre had warned that the geomagnetic storm may cause “possible widespread voltage control problems.”

These storms can produce currents which flow through the power grid; at high levels, the currents can cause internal damage to electric components, leading to large-scale power outages. However, no significant outages were reported as of Friday morning.

The event comes just weeks after the northern lights were reportedly seen across the Canadian Prairies and regions of the Northern U.S.

The sun constantly gives off energy but there is a measurable 11-year cycle when its energy output goes up and down, said Mike Jensen, the science gallery and planetarium programs supervisor at the Manitoba Museum, speaking with the Star in late February following another geomagnetic storm.

“And right now, we’re near the peak of it,” he said. As a result, astronomy enthusiasts can expect more intense and vivid northern lights on Earth.