British stargazers have been treated to the celestial light show a fair few times this year (Picture: Cairngorms Astronomy Group/PA)
A ‘once in a decade’ solar event take place over the next few months – and it means you’ll get even more chances to see the Northern Lights.
The neon spaghetti strings of green, red and blue have become an increasingly common occurrence in, of all places, people’s back gardens in London this year.
But the Met Office say that the lights will be visible farther south more frequently next year because of a shift in the sun’s magnetic fields.
Every 11 years or so, the sun’s magnetic fields flip over. We’re now approaching the tail end of this process, called the solar maximum when the sun gets especially revved up and spits out all sorts of solar goo at us.
When all this sun gunk, called solar flares, splatters onto the earth, this causes the northern lights.
‘While it’s not possible to know precisely what this means for individual Earth-directed solar events, it does mean there will likely be further chances of aurora visibility in the UK in the coming months,’ says Krista Hammond, of the Met Office Space Weather Operations Centre (MOSWOC).
The northern lights are caused by charged particles coughed up by the sun colliding with the Earth’s atmosphere (Picture: AS1 Amber Mayall/RAF/SWNS)
‘While we’re in the solar maximum phase now, which could last a year, it’s not possible to know exactly when the number of sunspots peaked until some time after it has happened.’
The northern lights, or aurora borealis, are caused when atoms get a little too excited by solar winds smashing into the Earth’s magnetic field.
Electrons get so excited in fact that they release light – the oxygen in the atmosphere makes this light green or red, while nitrogen tinges it blue.
In recent months, there’s been a fair few solar flares causing geomagnetic storms, hence why we’ve been seeing the auroras in the UK so much.
When the night skies above Britain were lit up by the lights in May, this was down to what the Met Office says was ‘the strongest geomagnetic storm on Earth in two decades’.
‘A similar, though less strong, event reached Earth earlier in October, providing aurora visibility as far south as parts of central and southern England and Wales,’ the weather service adds.
While seeing them from your garden is neat, space probably offers the best view of the auroras (Picture: Reuters)
Now the sun reaching solar maximum means the auroral oval, or the area on Earth where the lights are visible, will widen even more.
The Met Office, citing data from NASA, didn’t give an exact date of when this will happen. AuroraWatch UK, which tracks the phenomena, says there is ‘no significant’ chance of the northern lights today.
Though scientists generally agree the solar maximum will be reached next year. Even outside of the solar maximum, the best seasons to see the aurora are spring and autumn, especially close …read more
Source:: Metro
