Northern Lights may be seen across the UK tonight. This is a very rare phenomenon.
The Met Office forecast suggests the display, called the Aurora Borealis, could be visible to the naked eye along the northern horizon from Scotland – where skies are clear, and may even be seen briefly in Northern Ireland and northern England.
A minor enhancement to the auroral oval – the range of the polar lights – is responsible for the display being visible so far south this week.
The Northern Lights from the Holy Island causeway, Northumberland. Photo by Owen Humphreys.PA Wire/PA Image – Owen Humphreys
On Wednesday, lights could be seen in Northumberland. The activity should start to subside by Saturday.
Don Pollacco of University of Warwick’s Department of Physics said it is difficult to know exactly when the Northern Lights are visible.
He said: “To predict exactly where you can see the Northern Lights is difficult as conditions can change quickly.
“However, one thing is for sure, and that is that you are unlikely to see them from a brightly lit city environment – you need to go somewhere dark and look towards the northern horizon (look for the North Star).
“So, you would preferably be in the countryside away from street lights. Of course it also needs to clear.”
He explained the meaning of lights by adding: “The Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) are caused by the interaction of particles coming from the sun, the solar wind, with the Earth’s atmosphere – channelled to the polar regions by the Earth’s magnetic field.
“It’s actually a bit like iron filings and the field of a bar magnetic.
“The solar wind contains more particles when there are sun spots, as these are regions on the sun’s surface where the magnetic field is interacting with the plasma in the Sun, and the particles can be released.
“Once the particles are channelled into the Earth’s atmosphere they interact with molecules and have distinctive colours (eg oxygen molecules produce green light, nitrogen red light etc) and patterns such as light emissions that look like curtains or spotlights.
“These shapes over change quickly over timescales of minutes/seconds.”
