She’s hoping for another opportunity this weekend, but for now count Bullister among the many who had to experience the dazzling display through the lens of others who posted photos on social media.

The light show Thursday evening was the strongest since May and could be seen as far south as Texas, Florida and California. New Englanders were treated to breathtaking views of dancing bright purples, pinks and greens visible from Boston and beyond from approximately 7 to 8:30 p.m.

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

The Northern Lights, formally known as aurora borealis, are created when charged particles from the Sun collide with gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, releasing a huge amount of kinetic energy to produce visible light.

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

Images of the glowing sky filled news feeds on social media sites. Scattered among these posts were others from users lamenting their missed opportunity to see the lights.

“I’m so disappointed! I missed it all!” one Instagram user commented below a photo 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 was watching some wild shrek,” one person wrote.

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

“I’m kicking myself for missing them since I missed them in May too,” Sohn said in a message to the Globe.

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

“Nothing. Nada,” they wrote. “I got the wrath of kids for the rest of the night.”

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

A frequently asked question on social media was whether there would still be a chance to see the lights on Friday evening. There was some hope, as forecasters predicted the lights might dance across the sky again, but wouldn’t be nearly as vibrant as the massive geomagnetic storm that peaked at just the right time Thursday evening.

Vincent Ledvina, an aurora photographer who lives in Alaska, said there may be “sporadic images in the mid-latitudes” but that it is “unlikely to be the caliber of Thursday night’s show.”

The grand display was the result of a massive coronal mass ejection, or large ejection of plasma from the sun, that occurred earlier this week and caused a massive geomagnetic storm on Earth that brought much of the country to Mother’s awe-inspiring show Nature could watch. When these ejections pass Earth, the auroras can be enhanced much further south than the North Pole, as seen Thursday evening.

Geomagnetic storms are harmless to humans but can cause disruptions and lasting impacts to satellites, technology and communications, prompting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to establish a risk scale.

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

“Trying to figure out whether a CME will actually hit Earth, graze us or miss us completely is extremely difficult,” said Shawn Dahl, a meteorologist at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. “The sun is 150 million kilometers away and it is not easy to understand the impact on the Earth.”

New Englanders have had the opportunity to see several aurora events this past year, more than average compared to recent years, due to where we are in the current solar cycle.

“Solar cycles average eleven years during which the sun goes from a “minimum of activity to a maximum and back to a minimum again,” says Dahl. This fluctuation occurs because the sun reverses its magnetic poles every eleven years due to the constant magnetic unrest within.

It is unknown when peak activity will be observed until next, but increased activity over the past six months gives scientists confidence that it is close.

“2024 has proven to be a very active year for aurora viewing. The current thinking is that we can anticipate space weather storms for the rest of this year and possibly into 2025,” Dahl said.

That’s good news for those who were traveling and missed Thursday’s show.

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

“Of all the weeks you need to be on vacation,” he said in a telephone interview Friday. “People saw this from their own front yard where I live.”

Matusko said it is difficult 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 completely miss this latest display. Even from Orlando, the aurora cast a deep purple glow across the sky at sunset, he said.

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

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 eluded her for a long time.

“If it happens that the Northern Lights are there, that would be amazing,” 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.