The northern lights were visible in large parts of the country Thursday, including Maryland, delighting skygazers who witnessed the rare event.

The Space Weather Prediction Center issued a severe geomagnetic storm watch for Thursday and Friday, after scientists detected a coronal mass ejection — a large blast of plasma and magnetic field from the sun’s surface — on Tuesday evening.

With clear skies in the forecast, Marylanders could get a second chance Friday night to spot the stunning aurora.

This surge of particles has been trekking to Earth at extraordinary speed; once its reaches our orbit, it can disturb Earth’s magnetic field. Interactions between the solar particles with the upper atmosphere causes the release of photons, which are particles of light.

In order words: Solar storms create the pretty aurora borealis.

How can I see the northern lights?

Clear, dark skies with limited moonlight and getting way from city lights create the best conditions to see the aurora. From Baltimore, that may mean traveling out into the suburbs or more rural areas of the region, outside the I-695 beltway.

Wherever you go, look north and toward the horizon. Cameras may be able to capture the lights better than the naked eye.

Once experts have that data, it will also be easier to tell where the northern lights will be most visible. The center has an aurora dashboard — including a model forecasting where aurora might be in the next few minutes.

This will be the second geomagnetic storm this week. Over the weekend, people reported seeing red aurora, which has not usually been this visible so far south, in Owings Mills. The upcoming storm is expected to be stronger, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center.

Are these storms unusual?

Geomagnetic storms are a normal part of the sun’s 11-year cycle, and solar events such as the one in May that produced aurora visible across the globe are not uncommon. If this upcoming storm is as strong, that would be unusual, said Shawn Dahl, a service coordinator at the Space Weather Prediction Center.

It shows how active this solar cycle has been, Dahl said, and how much energy the sun is capable of releasing.

The Space Weather Prediction Center ranks storms on a severity scale from 1 to 5. The storm watch for Oct. 10-11 is a 4, like the storm we had in May. That was the strongest we had seen since 2003 Halloween solar storms, which disrupted satellite-based systems and communications worldwide.

As states recover from Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, the space weather center reached out to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and some state emergency watch centers to warn of potential issues from the solar storm.

The storm, Dahl said, damages satellite operations and communications, GPS and navigation.

Technology has improved since the disruptive 2003 solar storm, and different industries, like telecommunications and utilities, have learned to take precautionary measures, Dahl said. Officials are still investigating the extent of the damage the May storm caused, but beyond some devices dropping out temporarily, there were no major impacts on the power grid.

Experts like Dahl don’t know why the solar cycle has been more active.

“That’s one of the many mysteries of the sun that we’re still unraveling” said Rob Steenburgh, a space scientist at the center.

There was a lot going on the sky in Baltimore on Thursday. In addition to the showing by the northern lights, there was a chance that a comet would still be visible in some areas. And thousands of birds were expected to fly over the city — hopefully they enjoyed the show.