Cyr has already checked www.spaceweather.com and knows that solar activity is extremely low tonight, so the chance of seeing the northern lights is slim to none. Yet, the crisp night sky is still clear and the Milky Way seems to shine, especially compared with the dimly lighted suburban sky that I’m used to. Cyr, 60, reaches back and changes cameras, goes from a D800 to a D700, to try to frame land and sky just right and get that iconic shot — exactly as he did on Jan. 25, 2012, from 3 to 6 a.m.

That night his trusty website noted that a huge explosion on the sun had flung a wave of solar particles toward earth. On average, it takes about 2½ days for the sun’s eruptions to reach our planet’s upper atmosphere, and Cyr was ready for the glancing blow. He picked as his backdrop a windmill on an Amish farm in nearby Easton.

“The clouds started to break and I could see a little green stripe. Then the green grew larger and formed a wavy ribbon that started moving. Then the blues, and purples, and reds started to appear,” says an animated Cyr.

This master chronicler of the night sky was ready to capture the moment, clicking at least a thousand times until the sun rose and he drove away exhausted. One shot, in particular, taken around 5 a.m., has the windmill standing tall, with vivid patches of red, green, and blue forming a kaleidoscopic quilt in the sky. That photo would soon appear on the front page of the Portland Press Herald downstate, catching the eye of Kevin Gove, a publicist for the Maine Office of Tourism. When Gove put the same shot on the MOT Facebook page, the response was overwhelming.

“People were surprised to know that the northern lights can be viewed in Maine. They thought they could only be seen in Alaska, Iceland, or Scandinavia,” Gove says.

According to Joseph Kunches, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo., seeing the northern lights in Maine is not uncommon.

“Over a typical 11-year solar cycle, there might be 500 to 600 events that could cause the aurora oval to go that far south. Back in 2003, around Halloween, there was a two-week episode where the sun got really eruptive with big flares. It ended up pushing the aurora as far south as central Florida. But that only happens once every 15 years,” says Kunches.

Aurora borealis, or the northern lights, occurs when charged particles from the sun collide with Earth’s atmosphere. Viewed above the magnetic pole of the Northern Hemisphere, the band of colors is created by those solar flares interacting with varying gases in our atmosphere. For example, oxygen molecules produce the most prevalent color, green. The much rarer nitrogen forms a blue or purplish aurora.

While the crisp, clear nights of winter are most associated with viewing of the northern lights, Kunches notes that the spring and fall have the strongest magnetic storm activity, adding that this year and early 2014 will be extremely active.

“We’re at the peak of the latest 11-year solar cycle. We see sun spots accumulating, storing energy, that are ready to pop,” adds Kunches.

For the novice northern lights viewer, Kunches recommends finding a dark area on a hill, away from city lights. Check your local weather to ensure that you’re going to have a clear night. Also take note of the face of the moon. If it’s full, there’s a far lesser chance of viewing the lights. Most importantly, visit the Space Weather Prediction Center on the NOAA website, www.noaa.gov, or a comparable website such as www.spaceweather.com, to see what the sun is up to and whether there’s any chance of solar activity that night.