Northern Lights could be visible in parts of UK tonight
The Northern Lights could be visible in parts of the UK on Sunday night, the Met Office has said.
The phenomenon, also known as aurora borealis, is usually seen from countries such as Iceland and Norway.
But it is visible from the UK on rare occasions, and the last sighting was earlier this month in the skies above Scotland and northern England.
The Met Office announced on Sunday 24 March that the phenomenon could be seen overnight due to “a combination of fast solar winds and the recent arrival of a Coronal Mass Ejection from the sun”.
This is a large expulsion of magnetic field and accompanying plasma mass from the Sun’s corona into the heliosphere.
They could be seen across the “north of the UK”, the Met Office added. Usually, sightings of the Northern Lights are limited to Scotland.
The Aurora Borealis is a natural phenomenon characterised by colourful displays of light, most commonly seen in regions near the Arctic Circle such as Norway, Canada, Alaska and Iceland.
The sky lights up with large areas of colour, including pale green, pink, shades of red, yellow, blue and violet.
It occurs when charged particles from the sun collide with gases in the Earth’s atmosphere after being channelled to the polar regions by the planet’s magnetic field.
Solar winds drive charged particles from the sun which strike atoms and molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, causing the light show.
Different colours in the sky result from particles interacting with different gases in the Earth’s atmosphere, according to the Royal Observatory Greenwich.
The colour green arises from the interaction between solar particles and oxygen, whereas shades of purple, blue, or pink stem from interactions with nitrogen.
Occasionally, a deep red hue may appear when solar particles interact with oxygen molecules at very high altitudes.
The Northern Lights can only be seen in darkness, when skies are clear, and away from any light pollution.
The lights generally extend from 50 miles to as high as 400 miles above the Earth’s surface, according to the Met Office.
