Many of us will have caught a glimpse of the Northern Lights, otherwise known as Aurora Borealis, over the past few nights. Photos taken across the UK on Saturday morning (May 11) showed the sky turning magnificent shades of green and purple.
Frustratingly though, many of us will have missed it between Friday and Sunday nights. Is there a chance you could see it tonight? The short answer is no.
This is because according to the Space Weather Prediction Centre (SWPC) in the USA, the geomagnetic storm that illuminated our skies ended at 6am this morning (May 13). So frustratingly there doesn’t appear to be one upcoming anytime soon, but you can find out when the next one will be easily.
READ MORE: How to get phone notifications for the Northern Lights in the UK
When will I next be able to see the Northern Lights?
There are no forecasts suggesting we will see the Aurora Borealis any time soon. However, if you download the Aurora Watch UK app, it sends out alerts for when there’s a chance of the Northern Lights being sighted.
It’s available on both Apple and Android phones.
What causes the Northern Lights?
What we see is a wave of magnetically charged plasma, scientifically known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
They’re a result of strong solar flares pinged from the sun’s surface, which leads to the world’s magnetic field lighting up.
Are the Northern Lights dangerous?
No. Sometimes the event can interfere with navigation systems, but that’s it.
Prof Haswell, head of astronomy at the Open University, said: “A lot of the satellites communicate using radio signals and all of these charged particles speeding around disrupt radio signals, particularly GPS which is used by planes can be disrupted so it can cause navigation problems, it can cause outages with satellites, it can bring down power systems.”
She continued: “The last big G5 storm caused a power outage in Sweden and I haven’t heard of anything happening this time yet, so hopefully people have designed in sort of redundancies into their systems so that they can actually weather this sort of space weather.”
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