The bright Northern Lights illuminated the sky across certain parts of the UK last night.
The lights glazed the sky on Sunday 23 April and were seen across Wales and England.
Lancaster University’s AuroraWatch, run by the Space and Planetary Physics group, issued a ‘red alert’, meaning that seeing aurora was very “likely”.
Here’s what it looked like over St Mary’s lighthouse in Whitley Bay on the northeast coast of England.
Pic: PA
Pic: PA
The phenomenon caused the sky to turn different shades of green and purple. The display may also be visible in tonight’s sky if conditions are clear.
What causes the aurora or ‘northern lights’?
According to Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the aurora is caused by activity on the sun’s surface.
Solar storms on a star’s surface give out huge clouds of particles charged with electricity, which can enter the Earth’s atmosphere very quickly.
“These particles then slam into atoms and molecules in the Earth’s atmosphere and essentially heat them up,” Royal Observatory astronomer Tom Kerss said.
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“We call this physical process ‘excitation’, but it’s very much like heating a gas and making it glow.”
And so, what we are seeing are atoms and molecules in our atmosphere colliding with particles from the sun.
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