Northern Lights Make Incredible Sight In UK - Sky News

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6:49pm UK, Tuesday January 24, 2012

Stargazers around Britain have been delighted by the Northern Lights in recent days and experts say there could be even more impressive sightings to come.

The lights were discovered in 1621 by French scientist Pierre Gassendi, who named them Aurora - after the Roman goddess of dawn - Borealis, the Greek name for the north wind, Boreas.

The brilliantly coloured natural phenomena may look calm and tranquil but in reality they are made from millions of explosions of magnetic energy.

"It comes from individual solar storms. The sun has these eruptions and they arrive at Earth about 24 hours later," Dr Tim O'Brien, of the Jodrell Bank Centre at the University of Manchester, told Sky News Online.

The fantastic display of colour is caused by collisions between gaseous particles in the Earth's atmosphere, with charged particles released from the sun's atmosphere.

The variations in colour are due to the type of gas particles colliding.

While the spectacular light display of recent days is not unusual at this time of year the further north you go - Scotland, Scandanavia and Canada often gets a sighting - Sunday's and Monday's show was particularly amazing because it could be seen as far south as Northumberland and Cleveland.

Skies across the North of England were lit up because of a solar storm caused by the biggest eruption on the sun in six years.

A spokesman from Dundee's Mills Observatory, the only full-time public astronomical observatory in the UK, explained that the auroral activity was cyclical, happening around every 11 years and tied up with sunspot activity.

"We last saw something as strong as this in 2003 so that's sooner than might be expected," he told Sky News online.

"The displays works on a minimum to maximum range, with this year seeming to be a maximum in sunspot activity.

"The best place to see the lights is through a dark sky where there is very little light pollution - you're unlikely to see it in cities or where there are cloudy skies."

This Nasa visualisation shows extreme ultraviolet light emitted from the sun

It is possible, he suggests, that in a "maximum" year such as this, the lights will be seen further south.

"We see a form up here quite often, although not as bright as this was. Someone in London, however, might only get the chance of seeing such a display once every 30 years," the spokesman said.

Adrian West, of Meteorwatch, says the stronger the storm, the more chance there is of a sight further south.

"There are predictions, including from Nasa, that the solar activity over the next couple of days will create more aurora. 

"If the solar activity intensifies, the lights could be seen in the Midlands, and if it's particularly high it could be seen in the south of the UK. But it's space weather, and just like earth weather, it's very unpredictable."

On his site, instructions on how to see it say: "To watch the aurora, you only need your eyes. Look north and low down on the horizon. It may be faint at first."