A light to remember... in every corner of Scotland
THE Northern Lights dazzled sky-gazers across Scotland this weekend after a rare solar storm raced to Earth.
The spectacular Aurora Borealis, typically visible only from northern areas of the British Isles, was seen across swathes of the UK on Friday night. It was also seen in parts of the US, Canada, Ireland and northern Europe.
The technicolour displays were caused by an extreme G5 geomagnetic storm, according to America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Such storms are rated G1G5,
with G5 the strongest. A spokesman said the storm itself was triggered by a ‘large, complex’ sunspot cluster, 17 times the diameter of the Earth.
The last G5 storm in 2003 sparked power outages in Sweden, according to Professor Carole Haswell, head of astronomy at the Open University.
She said the rare phenomenon occurs only about every 22 years as the magnetic field of the sun’s cycle ‘winds itself up and then rearranges itself’. The colours within the aurora are produced when highly charged particles bombard the Earth’s magnetic poles and crash into gases in the atmosphere. Different colours appear according to which gas is involved.
Professor Haswell told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘Green comes from oxygen, which is 80 to 250 miles above Earth’s surface.
‘The purple, blue and pink come from nitrogen and when you get a very strong aurora, sometimes you see a scarlet red, from oxygen higher in the atmosphere.’