Recent Solar Filament Creates Northern Lights over Canada [PHOTO]

Swirls of green and red appear in an aurora over Whitehorse, Yukon on the night of September 3, 2012. 

The aurora was due to the interaction of a coronal mass ejection (CME) from the sun with Earth's magnetosphere. 

The CME left the sun on August 31 and arrived on September 3.

Credit: David Cartier, Sr./NASA

Beautiful swirls of green and red lights appeared in the sky over Whitehorse, a town in the Canadian territory of Yukon, on the night of 3 September.

The lights were caused by a whip-like solar filament, ejected as a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). The phenomenon did not connect with the Earth directly but glanced off the planet's magnetic environment, or magnetosphere.

The CME erupted on the surface of the Sun on 31 August and travelled towards Earth at a speed of more than 900 miles per second, according to NASA. In March 2010, a solar filament loop that erupted on the Sun's surface was as large as the circumference of the Earth.

The filament touched the magnetosphere a mere three days later - the distance between the planet and the Sun is roughly 149,785,000km - causing phenomenon called the Aurora Borealis (also known as the Northern Lights) to appear over Whitehorse.

Auroras are actually energy released in the form of colorful lights and are seen in skies at dusk.