The sun spewing plasma towards you sounds dangerous, right? But rather let me assure you that the outcome is one of pure beauty.

If you get a chance to gaze up at the sky late tonight, and into early tomorrow morning, you may just be lucky enough to see the northern lights, otherwise known as aurorae.

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysis (CfA) explains that the sun’s surface erupted and hurled millions of ionized atoms, or plasma, into space on Sunday, resulting in the potential light show.

According to Leon Golub of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the eruption is directed at the Earth, and is expected to arrive early in the day on August 4th. He further states, “It’s the first major Earth-directed eruption in quite some time.”

As an explosion such as this reaches the Earth, it interacts with the magnetic field of the Earth and has the potential to cause a geomagnetic storm, according to the CfA. Solar particles then flow toward the Earth’s magnetic poles down the field lines. The glow you will see, similar to that of a neon sign, is a result of the particles crashing with the nitrogen atoms and the oxygen atoms in the atmosphere.

If you want to catch the rippling “sheets” of red and green lights, make sure to look into the northern sky late tonight and early tomorrow morning. It’s going to be a light show spectacular that you don’t want to miss!