The northern lights were spotted on a second night in the UK on Monday and 24 hours ago they were visible as far south as Cambridgeshire under ideal conditions.
Northern Scotland was the best place to capture this phenomenon in one night, as overcast skies unfortunately prevented some avid astronomers in southern England from seeing it again.
There is a chance they will be visible further south on Tuesday evening.
Here’s what you need to know.
What is Northern Lights?
The aurora borealis, also known as the Northern Lights, is caused by solar activity and the resulting charged particles from the solar wind collide with molecules in the Earth’s upper atmosphere.
The Met Office explains: “Solar winds are charged particles moving away from the Sun at about a million miles per hour.
“When the magnetic polarity of the solar wind opposes the Earth’s magnetic field, the two magnetic fields combine, allowing these energetic particles to flow towards the Earth’s north and south magnetic poles.”
Depending on which gas molecules are hit and where they are in the atmosphere, different amounts of energy are released in the form of different wavelengths of light.
Oxygen gives off a green light when it hits 60 miles above the Earth, while rare all-red auroras appear at 100-200 miles. Nitrogen makes the sky glow blue and takes on a purple hue when it is higher in the atmosphere.
Why are they visible in the UK this week?
Sightings are rare south of Norway, Iceland and Greenland because, according to the Met Office, it takes a “severe or extreme geomagnetic storm” to move the belt south and directly over the UK.
The weather bureau says: “The aurora usually occurs in a band called an annulus (a ring about 3,000 kilometers in diameter) centered around the magnetic pole.
“The arrival of coronal mass ejections from the Sun could cause the ring to expand, bringing the aurora to lower latitudes. Under these conditions, the lights can be seen in Britain.”
The Met Office added that during moderate geomagnetic storms, the aurora can be faintly visible on a clear night from northern parts of the UK as they move towards southern Iceland or the Faroe Islands.
Where can you see the northern lights today?
The Northern Lights can be seen mainly in Scotland, Northern England, North Wales and Northern Ireland.
However, there is a chance that by Tuesday evening they will again be visible to the south.
The best conditions for watching the lights are when the sky is dark and without clouds. However, the best time to see them is after sunset, just after 5:30 pm.
Ideally, the lights are best seen away from any light pollution in remote areas facing the northern horizon. The northern shores offer some of the best vantage points.
Aurora Watch UK Twitter accountRun by space physicists at Lancaster University, it tweets when the northern lights can be seen from the UK.
Source: I News
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