She’s hoping for another chance this weekend, but for now, Bullister is among the many who got to experience the jaw-dropping spectacle through the lens of others who posted photos on social media.

Thursday night’s light show was the strongest since May and could be seen as far south as Texas, Florida and California. New Englanders were treated to a breathtaking view of dancing vibrant purples, pinks and greens visible from Boston and beyond from approximately 7:00 to 8:30 p.m

Ryan French, a solar astrophysicist at the National Solar Observatory in Boulder, Colorado, said the northern lights have been spotted in every U.S. state except Hawaii.

The Northern Lights, formerly known as the Aurora Borealis, occur when charged particles from the Sun collide with gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, releasing enormous amounts of kinetic energy to produce visible light.

The result is a glow around the Earth’s poles. Oxygen atoms produce red and green hues, while nitrogen atoms produce pink and blue light.

Images of the glowing sky filled news feeds on social media sites. Among those posts were other posts from users lamenting their missed chance to see the lights.

“I’m so depressed! I missed the whole thing!” one Instagram user commented under a picture of pink and purple lights glowing above scattered clouds over Boston. “I keep missing it!” another wrote.

Others were busy with other things. “I can’t believe I missed it because I saw Shrek That’s Wild,” one person wrote.

Lauren Sohn, 30, of Jamaica Plain, didn’t expect Thursday night’s screening to start so early. Sohn said she and her wife “sprinted outside” after seeing photos of the lights on social media, but they missed it.

“I’m upset that I missed it, as I also missed it in May,” Sohn said in a message to the Globe.

Sohn found solace in a Facebook group in Jamaica Plain, where they started a “support post” for “those of us who were 20 minutes late to see the big aurora explosion.” One respondent sympathized with Sohn and said they took their children to see the lights at Larz Anderson Park in Brookline.

“Nothing. Nada,” they wrote. “Incurred the wrath of the kids the rest of the evening.”

Another user went to the same park “and all I got was this crappy photo,” followed by a picture of the night sky with a faint green glow over the city lights.

Questions were often asked on social media about whether there would be another chance to see the lights on Friday evening. There was some hope, as meteorologists predicted that the lights could dance across the sky again, although not nearly as violently as the massive geomagnetic storm that peaked at just the right time Thursday evening.

Vincent Ledvina, an Alaska-based aurora photographer, said there could be “sporadic mid-latitude views” but it was “unlikely to reach the caliber of the show (on Thursday night).”

The grand spectacle was due to a massive coronal mass ejection, or large plasma ejection, from the Sun that occurred earlier this week, triggering a severe geomagnetic storm on Earth, allowing much of the country to witness Mother Nature’s impressive display. When these ejections pass through Earth, the auroras can be enhanced much further south than the North Pole, as was seen Thursday evening.

Geomagnetic storms are harmless to humans but can cause disruption and lasting effects on satellites, technology and communications, prompting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to set a risk scale.

Forecasters say it is often difficult to predict specific time frames.

“It’s extremely difficult to figure out whether a CME actually hits Earth, grazes us, or misses us completely,” said Shawn Dahl, a meteorologist at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. “The sun is 93 million miles away and it is not easy to detect any possible influence on Earth.”

New Englanders had the opportunity to see several auroral events last year, which was above average compared to recent years because we are in the current solar cycle.

“Solar cycles are an average period of 11 years” during which the sun goes from a “minimum of activity to a maximum and back to a minimum,” Dahl said. This reversal occurs because the Sun reverses its magnetic poles every 11 years due to constant magnetic turbulence within it.

It is not known when peak activity will be determined in retrospect, but increased activity over the past six months makes scientists confident it is close.

“2024 has proven to be a very active year for aurora viewing. “Right now, we think we can expect space weather storms for the rest of this year and possibly into 2025,” Dahl said.

That’s good news for those who were out and about and missed Thursday’s performance.

Stefan Matusko, 51, a firefighter and photographer from Holyoke, has photographed previous northern lights in New England and said Thursday’s display was one of the most vivid he’s ever seen. The only problem was that he is in Orlando, Florida with his family visiting his daughter.

“Of all weeks on vacation,” he said in a telephone interview on Friday. “People saw this from their own front yards where I live.”

Matusko said it was hard to find the words to describe what he felt when he saw the northern lights in the past. “It’s just a moving experience,” he said.

But Matusko didn’t entirely miss this latest gig. Even from Orlando, the aurora cast a deep purple glow across the sky at sunset, he said.

A Reddit user was on a flight from Logan International Airport on Thursday just before the lights came on. “I’ve always wanted to see the Northern Lights and have never lived where I can see them,” the Reddit user wrote. After takeoff, “I saw some nice clouds at sunset, but no auroras.”

Bullister plans to go hiking in New Hampshire this weekend. She hopes that with a bit of luck she can catch a glimpse of the northern lights that have long eluded her.

“If it so happens that the Northern Lights are there, that would be great,” she said.

Globe staff member Jenna Perlman and correspondent Rachel Umansky-Castro contributed to this report.

Nick Stoico can be reached at [email protected]. Ken Mahan can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Instagram @kenmahantheweatherman.