People across the UK have managed to catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights on both Sunday and Monday nights, with the natural phenomena even spotted as far south as Kent. Residents in Scotland were rewarded with the best displays, with the lights also made appearances in Lancashire and the Lake District.
Unfortunately it proved tricky spotting the lights over Greater Manchester due to cloud cover, although some residents did see faint patches of colour in the breaks in the cloud. Passengers on board an easyJet plane from Reykjavik to Manchester were even treated to some of the best views after the pilot did a 360-turn to ensure everyone could see them.
But those still hoping to see the Northern Lights may be left disappointed as the Met Office has confirmed that it “isn’t likely” that the lights will be seen over northern England tonight. However, they may still be spotted in north-west Scotland.
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The Met Office told the Manchester Evening News “The peak of solar activity has passed and this combined with much cloudier skies means that it isn’t likely that people in northern England will see the spectacle. The greatest chances are in north-west Scotland.”
The activity over the past few days was the result of a large solar storm, which according to the Met Office is not unusual for this point in the solar cycle.
Head of space weather at the Met Office Mark Gibbs added: “What we saw (on Sunday) was a bubble of magnetised plasma particles that had come off the sun, and they happened to be heading towards the Earth in this instance,” he said.
“It took about two days for those particles to arrive from the sun, then the particles enter the Earth’s upper atmosphere and excite atoms.
“The most common sight is green, which is the result of oxygen atoms being excited. (On Sunday) night we saw some reds and purples, indicative of nitrogen atoms being excited.”
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