Northern lights dazzle across Scotland, Ireland and south through England

Shimmering greens, purples and pinks of the northern lights appeared in the night sky across Britain and Ireland on Sunday night in a display that reached as far south as Hertfordshire and Cornwall.

The light spectacle, also known as an aurora, is usually most visible near the Earth’s magnetic north and south poles when high-speed electrically charged particles from space collide with gas molecules in Earth’s upper atmosphere.

Occasionally, this occurrence can be seen in the night sky over Britain.

The Met Office forecast clear conditions across the UK for Sunday night, saying the aurora borealis “may be visible as far south as central England tonight where skies remain clear”, adding that the lights are likely to be seen again on Monday night.

Dozens of spectators shared their sightings across social media on Sunday, with some reporting seeing the spectacle as far south as Cornwall.

“Who needs a trip to Iceland when you can see the northern lights from upper Wensleydale,” one person posted.

Another shared a snap purportedly from just outside London. “Northern lights in St Albans, Hertfordshire, tonight. Unbelievable.”

The Met Office later shared a series of snaps taken by sky watchers on the Scottish island of North Uist, the village of Llysfaen on the north coast of Wales, and Cambridgeshire and Shropshire in England.

“A coronal hole high speed stream arrived this evening combined with a rather fast coronal mass ejection leading to aurora sightings across the UK,” the forecaster said in a tweet just after midnight.

One account with the Twitter handle Cornwall Skies shared a photo of what appeared to be an illuminated night sky.

“Looking north tonight in east Cornwall. There are no towns causing light pollution nearby to the north, just Bodmin Moor,” it said. “We are also a ‘dark sky’ area, I think this could be the aurora northern lights.”

Auroras usually occur in a band called the annulus (a ring about 1,865 miles across) centred on the magnetic pole. The arrival of a coronal mass ejection from the sun can cause the annulus to expand, bringing the aurora to lower latitudes, and it is under these circumstances that the lights can be seen in the UK, according to the Met Office.