Northern Lights dazzle skies above UK – will they be visible tonight?

The Northern Lights were on show again across most of the UK last night even spreading as far south as Italy.

The Aurora Borealis, which is usually only visible near the Arctic Circle, could be seen over the country last night, and extended as far south as northern Italy.

It was a result of ‘severe geomagnetic storms’ which are expected to decline today.

Images show pink and green hues lighting up the night sky over Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

They were also visible in parts of south-west, southern, eastern and northern England.

But it does feel like this is becoming less of a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Will the Northern Lights be visible tonight?

If you missed them last night, do not threat too much. The Met Office has confirmed the lights ‘may still be visible’ in the north of the country.

They said: ‘A Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) that departed the Sun on January 18 reached Earth on the evening of January 19.

‘G4/Severe geomagnetic storms were observed, producing widespread auroras visible across the UK, with reports extending as far south as northern Italy.

‘By the evening of 20 January UTC, auroral activity is expected to decline, though it may still be visible in parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland, and other similar latitudes with clear skies.

‘Auroras are then forecast to return to background levels for the remainder of the period.’

Why are we seeing the Northern Lights so often lately?

Usually, you can only see the aurora in Iceland, Scandinavia, Canada and Alaska. But this year, a strangely wide swath of the Northern Hemisphere’s sky has been lit up with this brilliant show of colour.

‘The reason we are seeing more northern lights events, the aurora borealis, here in the UK is that we are near a solar maximum,’ explains Jo Farrow, a forecaster for the independent meteorological service, Netweather.

A solar maximum is a period during the sun’s 11-year cycle when the celestial body is especially pumped up.

What causes the Northern Lights?

The Earth has something known as a magnetic field that helps keep all kinds of space junk and gunk away – think of it like an apple wrapped in cling film.

One thing the magnetic field helps repel are particles, including the blobs of plasma spat out by the sun.

As nuclear reactions occur on the sun, it regularly coughs up material from its surface.

This wind travels through space at breakneck speeds up to 45 million mph. If any crash into Earth’s upper atmosphere, they bounce off the planet’s magnetic field and are thrown towards the poles.

Every particle glows different colours. Take oxygen, which has a greenish hue to it, or red-coloured nitrogen.

When all these colourful particles collide with the particles already trapped around Earth’s magnetic field, this causes them to light up.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

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