Those who missed out on the aurora borealis last weekend may have a chance to see them again, as experts predict there could be more aurora borealis in the near future.
Bands of pink and green light, known as the aurora borealis, lit up the night sky last weekend and were spotted in rare sightings across the UK, Europe and across the Northern Hemisphere after an “extreme” geomagnetic storm increased their visibility. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Krista Hammond, a space weather forecaster at the Japan Meteorological Agency, said the phenomenon was likely to occur more frequently in the coming years, but not uniformly.
“This all has to do with the so-called solar cycle of the Sun. The Sun has an active cycle of approximately 11 years, which begins with a so-called solar minimum, then moves towards solar maximum and back to solar minimum. . And we are now approaching solar maximum,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“What defines a solar maximum is when we see the most sunspots on the sun. And it’s the sunspots that cause what we know as space weather, or solar flares.
Hammond added: “This means that the frequency of space weather events that cause auroras increases as we approach solar maximum. However, this does not actually determine the magnitude of those events. .
“What we saw last weekend was a very unique situation. There were multiple eruptions of plasma coming from the sun, and the plasmas also caught up with each other as they reached Earth. When it interacted with the magnetic field of Earth’s upper atmosphere, we saw it as an aurora.
“And this coincided with clear skies and we arrived in the middle of the night so we could see really far south. There have been sightings across the UK since last weekend’s event.
“So we would expect to see something like space weather, but whether it will be large enough to be observed at these southern latitudes is a little difficult to predict.”
The aurora was observed on the north-east coast at Whitley Bay, Cambridgeshire, Essex and Wokingham, Berkshire. It was also seen in Suffolk, Kent, Hampshire and Liverpool.
