Stargazers will be in for a treat tonight – the Northern Lights will be visible over parts of the UK.
The Met Office has said the influence of a solar wind stream and a glancing coronal mass ejection – a large term meaning a solar flare – will make the stunning display visible in the northern part of Scotland.
The best places to spot this phenomenon will be in Scotland, North England and North Wales, where light pollution is low and viewing conditions are clear.
Tonight’s aurora is due to a ‘once in a decade’ solar event which has taken place over the past few months, meaning we get even more chances to see the Northern Lights due to solar activity.
The neon spaghetti strings of green, red and blue have become an increasingly common occurrence in, of all places, people’s back gardens in London this year.
But the Met Office say that the lights are visible farther south more frequently this year because of a shift in the sun’s magnetic fields.
What are the Northern Lights?
The Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis, are the names given to the curtains of colourful light that can appear in the night sky over the northern hemisphere.
They are a natural light display caused by charged particles from the Sun interacting with Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere.
These particles are carried by solar wind and are funnelled toward the polar regions, where they collide with oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere.
The collisions release energy in the form of light, creating shimmering displays in green, red, blue, and purple.
Green is the most common colour. It comes from oxygen at lower altitudes, while red and blue are produced by oxygen and nitrogen at different heights.
Every 11 years or so, the sun’s magnetic fields flip over. We’re now approaching the tail end of this process, called the solar maximum, when the sun gets especially revved up and spits out all sorts of solar goo at us.
When all this sun gunk, called solar flares, splatters onto the Earth, this causes the northern lights.
‘While it’s not possible to know precisely what this means for individual Earth-directed solar events, it does mean there will likely be further chances of aurora visibility in the UK in the coming months,’ says Krista Hammond, of the Met Office Space Weather Operations Centre (MOSWOC).
‘While we’re in the solar maximum phase now, which could last a year, it’s not possible to know exactly when the number of sunspots peaked until some time after it has happened.’
In April, the Northern Lights covered parts of the UK, leaving Brits reaching for their cameras.
Images showed the aurora borealis geomagnetic storm lighting up the night sky, with conditions confirmed to be ‘optimum’ in most regions.
People in the Isle of Skye and Cumbria reported catching a glimpse of the phenomenon.
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