The Northern Lights lit up the skies over Britain on Sunday evening, appearing as far south as Stonehenge.
The official Stonehenge account on X (formerly Twitter) posted a photo of red, purple and orange lights shining behind the monument.
People have also photographed the lights in Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as parts of England from Northumberland to Dorset.
The Met Office said the lights “were visible across Scotland, were clearly visible from Shetland webcams, and sightings were reported in parts of central and eastern parts of England.”
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.
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 a coronal mass ejection from the Sun could 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, which would be 4:25 pm today.
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.
Source: I News
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