A Mysterious Space of Light North Dakota Dark

Wow! Strange and marvelous. Just make a look at this map of America at night. As you'd anticipate, the cities are blazing, the Great Lakes and the oceans dark, but if you look at the center, where the Eastern lights give way to the unfilled Western plains, there's a mysterious bunch of light there that makes wonder.

It's a slight to the left, high up near the Canadian edge. Now run your eye up that line of lights at the center of the country, look over to the upper left: There's a bit that looks like a big city but there is no big city in that part of North Dakota. There's mostly lawn. 

And North Dakota, on several nights, is almost as intense as the aurora borealis. Looking down from the International Space location, those lights are the North Dakota oil fields. The green curve, of course, is the aurora.