How to see the Northern Lights in the UK tonight

It’s a spectacular natural phenomenon that puts on a show across the Arctic Circle and occasionally even creeps into the south of Scotland.

But last night – and again in the coming evenings – something else remarkable will happen.

Aurora borealis is expected to light up the night sky across Britain and extend into southern Kent and Cornwall.

There were also sightings across southern England on Sunday Northern Ireland, South Wales and Norfolk.

It is the result of a strong coronal mass ejection (CME) erupting from the sun’s surface, sending charged particles toward Earth.

These hit our planet on Sunday and interacted with oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere, ejecting them green and red colors over our poles.

When the CME or solar flare is really strong, these charged particles can travel further away from the Arctic and Antarctic circles and reach mid-latitudes, such as southern England.

The Met Office’s Space Weather arm said it expected another CME to hit Earth later today, which could reportedly amplify the effects of the current Northern Lights.

‘[An] Aurora is possible again to similar latitudes, perhaps as far south as central or southern England if more sustained storm periods occur,” it added.

The only hindrance will be cloud cover.

It is predicted to be cloudy over much of the UK overnight, which could hamper hopes of seeing the aurora.

The best way to see it, according to the British Geological Survey, is to find a dark place, away from street lights and ideally a cloudless sky.

Experts say skywatchers should generally look north, though the spectacular sight could be overhead or elsewhere.

Looking up around midnight gives the best chance of seeing it, they add.

The sun goes through an 11-year solar cycle in which the magnetic field becomes more or less active.

This, in turn, causes a fluctuating amount of activity on the sun’s surface.

Since the last solar minimum was in 2020, this activity has increased since then, meaning our star is currently at its most active since 2014.

It is expected to reach solar maximum in 2025, so more of these aurora displays are expected in the coming months and years.

The Northern Lights are mainly seen in high latitude regions, so any glimpse in the UK is a rare treat for stargazers.

But CMEs caused by intense solar activity could make it possible to see the spectacle much further south.

Sunspots are areas on the surface of the sun where powerful magnetic fields, created by the flow of electrical charges, become confused and eventually release a massive explosion of energy that results in a solar flare.

While our sun gives us life, it also often “sneezes,” ejecting billions of tons of hot plasma into space in colossal blobs of matter interlaced with magnetic fields — in other words, CMEs.

It emits giant flares, bursts of powerful electromagnetic radiation — X-rays, gamma rays and radio bursts — accompanied by streams of highly energetic particles.

CMEs usually take about 15 to 18 hours to reach Earth.

The aurora appears when atoms in the Earth’s atmosphere collide with energetically charged particles from the sun, creating breathtaking shades of green with hints of pink, red and violet.

It is more commonly seen in winter when nights are cold, long and dark.

When a solar storm heads our way, some of the energy and small particles can travel along the magnetic field lines at the north and south poles to Earth’s atmosphere.

There, the particles interact with gases in our atmosphere, resulting in beautiful light shows in the sky – the aurora or northern lights. Oxygen gives off green and red light, while nitrogen glows blue and purple.

In the north, the display is known as the aurora borealis, and in the south it is called the aurora australis.