The brilliant, haunting phenomenon known as the Northern Lights can also be a potentially deadly source of energy in outer space -- but Canadian researchers have now found a way to help protect astronauts and equipment from the fallout of aurora borealis.

The night-sky spectacle is the result of solar particles colliding with Earth's atmosphere during a space storm -- dangerous disturbances that can damage or even disable satellites and spacecraft, said Ian Mann, a physicist at the University of Alberta.

Until now, there has been no way of predicting when the storms will take place.

But Mann said his team can now pinpoint the eye of such storms -- often hundreds of thousands of kilometres above Earth -- and warn when the powerful wave of energy is coming.

"These storms are associated with intense radiation, very energetic particles travelling very fast. And they can bury themselves in satellite electronics. If you get enough of those particles you build up a charge and it can spark, and of course it can have very damaging consequences," Mann told CTV's Canada AM.

Working in partnership with NASA, the team uses five monitoring satellites and a number of ground-monitoring stations in Canada's north to detect magnetic disturbances in space.

Once a storm is located, the researchers can find the eye and predict the speed at which it is tavelling and when it will arrive here.

The energy entering Earth's atmosphere from such storms can be equivalent to the energy produced from 10 major power stations on Earth, Mann said.

The latest developments bring the team closer to their goal of being able to predict the storms before they occur.

"What we need to do now is to take that forward and really be able to predict when the release of this energy goes off. When does it go boom? That's what we're after," Mann said.