AURORA hunters across the UK and Ireland were left awestruck over the weekend with the stunning spectacle of the Northern Lights creating a dreamlike setting over both their homes and well-known landmarks.
Among those sharing their pictures on social media from Belfast was Ash O’Brien, who said they had been managing their expectations before the sky “exploded into a mind-blowing light show, with light rays and shimmers stretched across the whole sky.”
Others shared dramatic images from Dunluce Castle, the Giant’s Causeway and the Mourne Mountains.
Also known as an aurora borealis, the banks of pink and green light were made more visible on Friday night because of an “extreme” geomagnetic storm.
Hitting earth on Thursday, the solar storm was caused by a “large, complex” sunspot cluster 17 times the diameter of the Earth, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Professor Carole Haswell, head of astronomy at the Open University, said it had been 20 years since a storm with a G5 rating had hit the earth, causing power outages in Sweden.
Explaining how the different colours in the aurora are formed, she said the green came from oxygen which is about 80 to 250 miles above the earth’s surface.
“The purple, blue and pink comes from nitrogen and when you get a very strong aurora sometimes you see a sort of scarlet red, and that comes from oxygen which is higher in the earth’s atmosphere, at an altitude of about 180 miles.”
The aurora displays occur when charged particles collide with the Earth’s atmosphere around the magnetic poles.
This usually takes place in the northern hemisphere within a band known as the aurora oval, but the activity can expand to a greater area when the solar activity is especially strong – explaining why it reached as far as the UK and Ireland.
