It’s a brilliant and beautiful celestial light show in the sky — also known as the northern lights.

“I never really seen them in person, but they were pretty cool to see,” says 11-year-old Ryland Hines.

Ryland, his mom Megan and his big sister Taelyn shared photos they took of the aurora borealis Friday night near their cabin in Amery, Wis.

“We pulled over on a side road on the way up to the cabin and opened the sunroof and stuck our heads out at it and took a bunch of pictures,” Taelyn explained.

“It was really cool,” Megan added. “The Big Dipper was in it, and sat there for a while, and then we drove another five to ten minutes, got to the cabin and went out on the dock and they were just everywhere.”

The show is even better without light pollution.

Matt Vinge, an aurora chaser from St. Paul, showed us time lapse images from the Superior National Forest near Ely.  

“Looking and finding pretty things in the sky is a hobby of mine,” he says. “My neck hurt after about an hour of staring straight up.”

Vinge says he drove north and stayed up pretty much the whole night, snapping the brilliant images in yellow, purple and pink.  

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“It’s been described as fire,” he explains. “But fire’s not right, it’s like electricity, and shooting electricity, it’s crazy.”

Scientists say this cacophony of color is caused by solar flares that shoot charged particles at the Earth.

“It’s space weather, not just Earth weather, but space weather,” Sally Brummel, the planetarium manager at the Bell Museum, explains.

Brummel says our planet’s magnetic fields protect us.

She notes those particles interact with gases in the atmosphere, triggering a geomagnetic storm — and the light show begins.

“So the colors have to do with the different atoms in our atmosphere,” Brummel says. “So the particles are colliding with the atoms and exciting them and that gives off light.”

Green means the particles are colliding with oxygen, purple with nitrogen and red at a high altitude.

Those shimmering shades of light are 150 miles above us — although it might feel like you can touch them.

Experts advise the best viewing for Saturday night is between 1 a.m. and sunrise.

A good rule of thumb is the less light pollution, the greater the chance you’ll have a good view of the northern lights.   

“It’s like a big sheet in the sky that’s moving every which way,” Vinge says. “It’s a really magical thing.”