Aurora MAY be visible tonight from N England and northwards

finneyb · 12 Sep 2014

Aurora are also known as the Northern Lights

No promises at the moment - nothing is showing on the University of Central Lancashire's detectors http://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/ you want to see amber or red readings.

BUT there has been two CMEs (Coronal Mass Ejections) - major explosions on the Sun that send a vast stream of charged particles out - if the Earth is in the way these charge particles interact with our magnetic field and we get aurora- see https://www.flickr.com/groups/aurorawatch for photos

We appear to have a glancing blow at the moment but as Earth moves into/through the stream of charged particles some are predicting aurora could occur - the further North the higher the chance.

Useful websites
http://spaceweather.com - this is a US website - but still useful for UK
http://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/ - left hand column has useful background links.

Brian

RobinBHM · 12 Sep 2014

Ive always wanted to see the northern lights, I think Sussex may be a tad too far South though.......

mailee · 12 Sep 2014

A few years ago when I used to scuba dive we were in Scotland just over the boarder from Berwick on tweed when I saw the northern lights. Two of us were on shore cover around 9pm while the other divers were underwater. We laid back on the rocks and watched in awe the most wonderful coloured display dancing around the sky. We must have been watching it for some time as two divers surprised us by surfacing and shouting to log them out....they had been down for an hour.