Met Office experts have given hope of a ‘slight chance’ the Northern Lights will be visible in parts of the UK on Friday night (May 17). Ever since the stunning display last Friday (May 10) households have been hoping for another chance to see the breathtaking aurora.
According to the weather experts “there remains a slight chance of glancing Coronal Mass Ejection impacts overnight on Friday, May 17 into Saturday, May 18”. A spokesperson added: “These may bring some limited enhancement to the aurora, with the slight potential of allowing for some visibility as far south as northern Scotland or similar latitudes.”
Coronal mass ejections are are large explosions of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun’s outermost atmosphere. The Met Office added it observed two strong flares, as reported by The Mirror. The Met Office forecast comes as AuroraWatchUK, run by scientists at the Planetary Physics group at Lancaster University, issued an amber an alert – meaning there is a ‘possible chance’ – for geomagnetic activity in the skies above the UK.
READ MORE: Bladeless fan ‘as good as Dyson’ for half the price on Amazon hailed a ‘godsend’
Why it is so rare for the Northern Lights to be seen across UK
The natural aurora belt occurs around Norway, Iceland and Greenland meaning it takes a severe or extreme geomagnetic storm to bring the belt southwards directly over the UK. This makes it an incredibly rare occurrence. Moderate to strong geomagnetic storms can mean the Aurora borealis moves southwards across southern Iceland or towards the Faeroes but these auroras can only be faintly visible from the UK in ideal conditions.
Tips for seeing the aurora in the UK during a severe or extreme storm include it needing to be a clear night with no cloud cover, you’ll need to find a dark location with no light pollution and then look towards the northern horizon. The distance to the aurora belt means it can be difficult for it to be seen clearly by eye and it is often portrayed much brighter in pictures.
How to get alerts to your phone and what the different notifications actually mean
Last Friday’s (May 10) Northern Lights display was especially intense around London and the rest of England. This is an incredibly rare occurrence – it is referred to as ‘once in a lifetime’ for a reason – so we do need conditions to be perfect to stand a chance of seeing the Northern Lights.
There is a way of making sure you don’t miss it in future and that’s by downloading a free app on your phone. The image above is a notification from the app on May 10 and it gives an indication of just how high the ‘disturbance level’ needs to be for the aurora to be visible across England. There have been amber notifications since Friday but there have been very few sightings.
AuroraWatch UK is a free service offering alerts of when the aurora might be visible from the UK. It is run by scientists in the Space and Planetary Physics group at Lancaster University’s Department of Physics. You can find it in your phone’s App store called AuroraWatch UK Aurora Alerts. If you download it, you will get a message on your phone when there is activity likely to lead to the Northern Lights.
Want more from MyLondon? Sign up to our daily newsletters for all the latest and greatest from across London here.
