When stormy weather hits Britain it tends to bring misery and travel chaos, but a different type of storm hurtling in from space illuminated the night sky on Monday.
The northern lights were visible as far south as Kent as the energy from a solar storm crashed into the Earth’s magnetic field. The aurora could well be visible again across the country on Tuesday night as the sun continues its burst of activity, experts have said.
The lights are often visible in the northernmost reaches of Britain but forecasters have predicted the chance of seeing them much further south after picking up an increase in solar activity. They were visible on Monday night across Wales, the Midlands, Norfolk and southeast England.
Aurora were seen at Hunstanton lighthouse in Norfolk early Tuesday
JULIE SMART/BAV MEDIA
When present over skies further south, they are often best viewed through the lenses of cameras or smartphones, which tend to pick out the colours better and more vividly, but there is a chance that they will also be faintly visible to the naked eye on Tuesday night.
What are coronal mass ejections?The sun’s atmosphere, which becomes visible on Earth during total eclipses, is known as its corona. The sun can produce giant eruptions within its atmosphere, known as coronal mass ejections, which send billions of tons of plasma thundering out into space at up to 6 million mph.They can be caused when twisted structures within the sun’s magnetic field become too stressed and release the tension by suddenly snapping and realigning.These ejections contain their own magnetic field. The fastest ones can hit Earth in as little as 15 to 18 hours, while slower ones can take days. When they hit the Earth and interact with our atmosphere they can bombard the atmosphere with charged particles that interact with oxygen and nitrogen to create the northern and southern lights. They can also induce electrical currents that flow through power grids.
Charged particles are accelerated by Earth’s magnetic field and collide with particles in the atmosphere, creating displays in the sky such as at Findhorn Beach in Moray, Scotland
PAUL SCOTT/CMG
Space weather has the potential to cause chaos even greater than a traditional storm on Earth. Scientists fear that a very large solar eruption could bring down power grids, and are working to find a way to detect and classify giant solar eruptions further in advance.
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The largest solar storm in recorded history took place in 1859. Known as the Carrington Event, it caused sparking and even fires in telegraph stations. If a storm of similar magnitude hit today in a world with infinitely heavier reliance on electrical grids and devices, it could cause havoc.
Whittle Dean Reservoir in Northumberland reflects the lights, which are not typically seen during the lighter and shorter nights of summer
JULIE SMITH/STORY PICTURE AGENCY
The scale of risk would depend on the alignment of the magnetic field within a coronal mass. Satellites orbiting the sun about a million miles from Earth can detect these fields but are only stationed about 1 per cent of the distance between the Earth and the sun and so give us less than an hour’s notice of how damaging a solar storm may be.
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A breakthrough published this week saw the Solar Orbiter probe, which orbits tens of millions of miles closer to the sun, detect the field of an ejection much earlier, offering 15 hours’ notice before a solar storm hit in March. This could give power grids enough time to prepare for the electromagnetic onslaught.
A report in 2023 warned that space weather could trigger train signals to wrongly change from red to green, posing danger on the railways.
British-made instruments on the probe helped with the study.
Saltburn-by-the-Sea in North Yorkshire
OWEN HUMPHREYS/PA
Caroline Harper, the head of space science at the UK Space Agency, said: “We’re building the fundamental understanding needed to protect our satellites, astronauts and space-dependent infrastructure.
“The more we understand about how particles travel from the sun through our solar system, the better we can predict when and how space weather will affect us here on Earth. This work exemplifies how UK space technology and international collaboration directly translates into practical benefits for our increasingly connected world.”