Tracey Dailey captured this image on Salisbury Beach Thursday evening.

Who needs a planetarium to enjoy a cosmic light show when the skies provide one?

Thousands of people across the North of Boston region and elsewhere in the country and world looked up into the skies to gaze upon the Northern Lights -- in our region around 7:30 Thursday night. Staff photographer Keith Sullivan was among them and drove around the area grabbing pictures. Meanwhile, readers were also busy with their cameras, catching photos of the spectacle, which was expected to repeat Friday night.

The Northern Lights appear when the sun sends more than heat and light to Earth. In addition it sends energy and charged particles known as the solar wind. But sometimes that solar wind becomes a storm.

The sun's outer atmosphere occasionally "burps" out huge bursts of energy called corona mass ejections. They produce solar storms, also known as geomagnetic storms, according to NOAA.

Further, the Earth's magnetic field shields us from much of it, but particles can travel down the magnetic field lines along the north and south poles and into Earth's atmosphere.

When the particles interact with the gases in our atmosphere, they can produce light -- blue and purple from nitrogen, green and red from oxygen.

Here is an array of photos from our photographer, our readers, and The Associated Press.