Some beautiful pictures were shared of the amazing Aurora borealis on Monday night
The dazzling display above Galway (Image: Vinny Fanneran)
The Northern Lights created stunning scenes across Irish skies on Monday night, delighting stargazers with dazzling displays.
A massive solar flare took place on Sunday, releasing a “gorgeous” coronal mass ejection towards Earth which resulted in stunning sights above Galway, Mayo and Leitrim late on Monday night.
According to Met Éireann, the Northern Lights – also called the Aurora borealis – are the results of collisions between gas particles in our atmosphere and charged particles ejected from the Sun’s atmosphere. The colour of the Northern Lights changes due to the type of gas particles that are colliding.
The Aurora borealis above Mayo (Image: )
The scenes in Galway were beautiful (Image: Vinny Fanneran)
Oxygen molecules at approximately 100 km above the earth produce a greenish-yellow colour, while a red aurora can be seen when high level oxygen molecules are involved. Blue or purple auroras indicate the presence of nitrogen molecules.
While there was some uncertainty around weather conditions on Monday night, with clouds expected to impact the view of the lights, there was relatively little cover hampering stargazers’ sights.
There were stunning displays above Galway (Image: )
Donegal Weather Channel wrote in a post: “We now have a historic solar storm S4 / severe radiation storm boundary has been passed. The last S4 radiation storm occurred on October 29, 2003 before the infamous G5 Halloween storms. Potential effects are mainly limited to space launch, aviation, and satellite operations.”
The Met Office advises that to see the aurora, people should find a dark location with no light pollution, look towards the northern horizon and opt for when cloud cover is at its thinnest.
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