Some lucky people witnessed the stunning Northern Lights in the UK on Bonfire Night.
The northern lights were visible in some areas, including Yorkshire, on Sunday, November 5, and were “clearly visible” on some webcams. On Sunday, the Met Office said the best chances to see the northern lights, also known as aurora borealis, were in Scotland but “it could be possible as far south as central Wales and England”.
Many people hoped the lights would make a further appearance tonight. But, what are the chances we will see the aurora borealis?
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If you were hoping to catch a glimpse of them again tonight then don’t get your hopes up. The Met Office said that there’s ‘only a chance’ there will be sightings in northern Scotland tonight.
The Met Office said: “It is presumed that the majority of the enhanced aurora seen overnight on 05 Nov into 06 Nov has now passed, with only a chance of aurora sightings expected across northern Scotland for the remainder of 06 Nov and perhaps into 07 Nov. Thereafter aurora sightings are expected to become unlikely.”
Professor Don Pollacco, department of physics at the University of Warwick, said the phenomenon was caused by “the interaction of particles coming from the sun, the solar wind, with the Earth’s atmosphere – channelled to the polar regions by the Earth’s magnetic field”.
(Image: North Yorkshire Weather Updates)
Pollacco added: “It’s actually a bit like iron filings and the field of a bar magnetic. The solar wind contains more particles when there are sun spots, as these are regions on the sun’s surface where the magnetic field is interacting with the plasma in the sun, and the particles can be released. Once the particles are channelled into the Earth’s atmosphere they interact with molecules and have distinctive colours (eg oxygen molecules produce green light, nitrogen red light etc) and patterns such as light emissions that look like curtains or spotlights. These shapes change quickly over timescales of minutes/seconds.”
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