Northern Lights put on a spectacular display for Moray’s sky gazers
The Northern Lights lit up the skies above Aberdeenshire and Morayshire on Friday night in a powerful display that could be seen as far south as Kent in southern England.
With relatively clear skies ovehead, sky watchers in northern Scotland had to turn their attention to the south and south-east around 11pm as one of the strongest geomagnetic storms for over 20 years hit the earth and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has issued a rare solar storm warning for potentially impact to infrastructure, including satellites.
The Met Office said that "enhanced activity" is expected to persist, but at reduced levels, through Saturday night into Sunday.
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Professor Mathew Owens, Professor of Space Physics at the University of Reading said: “Over the past 48 hours we have seen a series of eruptions - known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) - from the Sun, and they seem to be headed right at us. Our forecast is showing six or seven of these eruptions piling up en route from the Sun to the Earth. Space is a mess right now.
“Forecasting CME arrival time is very difficult, but our best estimate is around 2am (BST, Saturday, 11 May) tonight. A strong aurora is probable for Scotland and northern England (and the weather looks to be cooperating for optimal viewing). It may stretch further south, but until we have those magnetic field measurements when the CMEs arrive, it's hard to say.
“What's really difficult is forecasting the likely effects of these eruptions and the impact they could have on communications and power on Earth. That's because it all depends on the strength and direction of the magnetic field inside the CMEs, and we basically have no information about that until the CMEs pass spacecraft close to Earth. The scale of this activity is rare, but not particularly unusual for the maximum phase of the Sun's 11-year cycle. It just so happens that Earth is in the firing line this time.”
The Northern Lights - or aurora borealis - appear as bright,curtains of lights in the night sky and range in colour from green to pink and scarlet.caused by charged particles from the sun hitting gases in the Earth's atmosphere.
The colours occur due to different gases in the Earth's atmosphere being energised by the charged particles - Oxygen atoms glow green - the colour most often seen in the Northern Lights, while nitrogen atoms emit purple, blue and pink.
