India, April 9 -- Just when you thought the northern lights couldn't get any more stunning, along comes NASA to crank that dial to an 11. The space agency blasted three sounding rockets above central and northern Alaska during an auroral substorm to study how these substorms impact the Earth's atmosphere.

The project, catchily named Auroral Waves Excited by Substorm Onset Magnetic Events (AWESOME), was led by researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF).

Here's how a NASA rocket experiment amplified the northern lights over Alaska In the first display on March 25, the research team fired a 42-foot rocket over central Alaska and a 70-foot rocket over the Arctic Ocean. Both rockets released their payloads - think ion guages,...