Residents of Sungai Besar in Malaysia could be forgiven for thinking they were looking at the northern lights in Scandinavia on Tuesday when the night sky glowed in different shades of green.

Photographs of the natural phenomenon were shared on Facebook, with other social media users commenting they witnessed the lights from their homes too.

Locals in the coastal town in Selangor first started noticing the bright rays at around 8.30pm. It was unclear how long the beautiful rays remained before they disappeared.

What might have caused the sky to turn glorious green in suburban Malaysia was also the subject of much discussion online.

Some theorised it was a reflection of bright lights from fishermen’s boats in the nearby Strait of Malacca, while others said the green lights came from a scattered storm cloud after a recent thunderstorm.

Others said, tongue-in-cheek, that it was a sign of the green wave’s arrival, referring to the growing influence of Parti Islam SeMalaysia in the country’s political scene.

This was not the first time lights resembling the aurora borealis in North America and Europe have been spotted in Malaysia.

Photos of the sky lit in luminous shades of green were shared in 2022, with social media users stating they were taken off the coasts of Pangkor and Langkawi islands, both north of Selangor.