Time lapse of the southern lights from the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft

A spectacular display of the Southern Lights has been caught on camera from space.

Time-lapse footage of NASA astronaut Jessica Meyer aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

The southern lights are just as common as the northern lights, and they occur regularly over Antarctica, but relatively few people live in latitudes near the South Pole, so they are not as well known as their northern counterparts.

These lights occur near the poles because the Earth’s magnetic field channels charge particles from the Sun into those regions, where they collide with the atmosphere and create a wave of brilliant colors.