Photo: Northern Lights Dance Over Denali

Northern Lights Over Denali — (Image credit: U.S. Department of the Interior)

The northern lights recently made an appearance over Alaska's Denali National Park, and as the above photo shows, they did not disappoint.

Northern lights are powerful geomagnetic storms, also known as auroras. They are seen on Earth when charged particles from the sun hit the Earth's atmosphere. The light show was visible across Alaska this past weekend (Jan. 26-27).

Denali covers a whopping 6 million acres of land in the Alaskan wilderness. The landscape ranges from taiga forest to high alpine tundra to snowy mountains. Denali is home to the tallest peak in North America, Mount McKinley, which has a height of 20,320 feet (6,193 meters). The mountain is part of the Alaskan range, which covers some 600 miles (966 kilometers), where "solitude, tranquility and wilderness await," as the park's website says.

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Brett Israel was a staff writer for Live Science with a focus on environmental issues. He holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from The University of Georgia, a master’s degree in journalism from New York University, and has studied doctorate-level biochemistry at Emory University.