The Northern Lights lit up the skies over Britain on Sunday evening, appearing as far south as Stonehenge.
People were able to photograph the lights across much of Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as parts of England from Northumberland to Dorset.
The Northern Lights, also known as the Northern Lights, are quite rare in the UK and when they are seen they are often only visible in the most northern parts of the country.
But even Steve showed up on Sunday. And yes, you read the title correctly.
What is Steve?
Steve is a thin purple streak of light that looks a lot like an aurora, although technically it isn’t one.
The name was given in 2016 in honor of a US citizen science project funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation.
The name is said to be inspired by the 2006 Dreamworks animated film. Through the hedge. In this film, a group of animals awaken from hibernation to find a huge hedge in their habitat that they fear.
“I’d be a lot less afraid of this if I only knew what it was called,” says one of the hedgehogs, to which Hammy the red squirrel, voiced by Steve Carell, suggests, “Let’s call him Steve.” nice name. Hedgehogs agree that this makes the hedge less scary.
“Steve” now stands for “significant improvement in heat dissipation” – although it was called “Steve” before the acronym was invented.
It differs from the aurora in that auroras are oval shaped and Steve is ribbon shaped. However, it only appears when there is an aurora in the sky, lasting 20 minutes to an hour at a time. Sightings have been reported in the UK, Canada, New Zealand and the northern US.
Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center have theorized that Steve is composed of a fast-moving stream of extremely hot particles called subauroral ion drift, although there is still some mystery surrounding it.
What are the Northern Lights?
The Northern Lights are a result of solar activity and are the result of charged solar wind particles colliding with molecules in the Earth’s upper atmosphere.
The Met Office explains: “The solar wind is charged particles that fly away from the sun at about a million kilometers per hour.” allowing these energetic particles to flow towards the Earth’s north and south magnetic poles. Auroras usually occur in a band called a ring (a ring about 3,000 kilometers wide) centered around a magnetic pole. The arrival of coronal mass ejections from the Sun can cause the ring to expand and move auroras to lower latitudes. In these circumstances, the lights are on in the UK.”
Depending on which gas molecules are exposed and where they are in the atmosphere, different amounts of energy are released in the form of light of different wavelengths.
Oxygen emits green light when it hits 60 miles above Earth, and at altitudes between 100 and 180 miles it creates rare, all-red auroras. Nitrogen causes the sky to glow blue, and at high altitudes in the atmosphere it takes on a purple hue.
Will the northern lights be visible from the UK tonight?
It is unlikely that the Northern Lights will be visible again tonight as geomagnetic activity has decreased, although it is not impossible, at least in the north of Scotland.
The Met Office said: “Most of the enhanced aurora observed on the night of 5/6 November is believed to have passed, with the remainder of the 6 November and possibly 7 November remaining. There’s only one chance to see the northern lights north of Scotland until November.” After this, aurora sightings are expected to become unlikely.”
The best conditions to see the lights are when the sky is dark and cloudless. This means the best time to see them is after sunset, so today at 4:24pm in London and 4:20pm in Edinburgh.
Ideally, the lights are best seen without light pollution in remote areas facing the northern horizon. The North Coast offers some of the best viewpoints.
Aurora Watch UK X Account The website, run by space physicists at Lancaster University, publishes reports on when the Northern Lights might be visible from the UK.