ONE of the most beautiful natural phenomenons was visible to lucky Ceredigion residents again on Monday night, 27 February.
The Northern Lights – or Aurora Borealis – made a rare appearance in the skies over Wales and Dafydd Lewis from New Quay was able to capture the lights using long exposure shots on cameras.
The Northern Lights are an extremely rare occurrence across the UK, with the exception of the northernmost parts of Scotland and are usually seen in Scandinavia and parts of the USA and Canada.
The Met Office confirmed that the sightings on Sunday were “a coronal hole high speed stream” combining with “a rather fast coronal mass ejection.” But said that they would be visible in parts of the UK on Monday providing there were clear skies.
Aurora Borealis is caused by atoms and molecules in the atmosphere which collide with particles from the sun.
It gets the distinctive wavy shape by the Earth’s magnetic field’s lines of force. The colours come from the different gases, with green being oxygen and the purple, blue or pink being nitrogen.
MORE NEWS:
Royal Museums Greenwich explains on its website that the lights are caused by solar storms on the surface of the sun giving out clouds of electrically charged particles which can travel millions of miles and collide with the Earth.
Most particles are deflected away but some are captured in the Earth’s magnetic field and accelerate down towards the north and south poles, colliding with atoms and molecules in the Earth’s atmosphere, according to the observatory.
The lights are the product of this collision between atoms and molecules from the Earth’s atmosphere and particles from the sun.
A Met Office spokesperson said the rare sightings of the aurora borealis in the UK on Sunday night were due to the “strength” of a geomagnetic storm and the “strip of cloudless skies” in southern regions.
The head of space weather at the Met Office, Mark Gibbs, said earlier it was “optimistic to expect clear sightings two nights in a row”.
He said: “(Sunday’s) sighting saw the coincidence of perfect conditions, making the aurora visible on the north horizon.”
Mr Gibbs added that Sunday night saw the combination of a cloud-free sky, clear air, and a dim moon, which allowed members of the public to see over long distances with little light pollution, and spot the northern lights.
The activity was the result of a solar storm, which Mr Gibbs said was not unusual for this point in the solar cycle.
“What we saw (on Sunday) was a bubble of magnetised plasma particles that had come off the sun, and they happened to be heading towards the Earth in this instance,” he said.
“It took about two days for those particles to arrive from the sun, then the particles enter the Earth’s upper atmosphere and excite atoms.
“The most common sight is green, which is the result of oxygen atoms being excited. (Sunday) night we saw some reds and purples, indicative of nitrogen atoms being excited.”
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here