Northern Lights UK: When and where to see aurora borealis again as another solar storm could be on the way

Jamie Barlow

18 May 2024 at 8:32 am·2-min read

The Northern Lights as seen from Mapperley Plains -Credit:Natalie Rheanne Waite

The Northern Lights could once again illuminate UK skies as early as next month. Just a week ago, the UK's skies were transformed into a spectacle of pink and green hues as the Northern Lights put on an impressive display for stargazers.

This followed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US issuing its first severe solar storm warning since 2005 due to a series of solar flares merging to create a massive burst of solar plasma, reports SkyNews.

Krista Hammond, a space weather expert at the Met Office, said: "We had a quite enormous sunspot, about 15 times the size of the Earth, on the Earth-facing side of the sun," She added that it was releasing numerous solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which are significant eruptions of charged particles.

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Several of these eruptions caught up with each other, resulting in a geomagnetic storm on Earth that was much stronger than any individual eruption would have caused alone. Ms Hammond noted: "The last time we saw a geomagnetic storm of this magnitude was back in 2003."

As the sun is currently in the most active period of its 11-year cycle, there may be another opportunity to witness the Northern lights in the coming weeks. Ms Hammond said: "The sunspot region, which gave all the solar flares and the coronal mass ejections, is now rotated round to the other side of the sun which isn't facing the Earth," but she added that this area will start to rotate back around to face the Earth again in a few weeks' time.

The sun's rotation on its axis takes approximately 27 days, suggesting that we might witness another display from the same solar region in early June.

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