South coast treated to ‘amazing’ Northern Lights display
South coast treated to ‘amazing’ Northern Lights display
Samuel MontgomerySat, October 10, 2026 at 10:43 PM UTC
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The celestial light show was also visible from Sheerness in Kent - Alamy/James BellThe Northern Lights have been spotted as far south as Lyme Regis overnight.
The Northern Lights have been spotted as far south as Lyme Regis overnight.
Space weather forecasts have said increased solar activity could also bring spectacular displays on Sunday evening and into the start of next week.
Sightings of the Northern Lights have been reported from Scotland and the North of England, to the Midlands and Home Counties on Saturday evening.
Glenn Patrick, a particle physicist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory who has worked on the Large Hadron Collider, shared an image on social media of purple skies above Dorset.
“Amazingly, the Northern Lights have returned to Lyme Regis tonight,” he wrote.
Glenn Patrick’s picture of the Northern Lights seen from Lyme Regis, Dorset - x.com/GlennNPatrick
The Met Office and National Oceanic and the Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have reported a window of “strong” geomagnetic storms, which can increase auroral activity.
In a post on social media earlier in the evening, the Met Office said: “The Northern Lights may be visible across parts of the North tonight.
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“With skies clearing in places, there could be some fantastic viewing opportunities.”
The aurora at South Shields, Tyne and Wear. Increased solar activity could bring light shows on Sunday evening and into next week - x.com/Adam_baker1490
According to the Met Office, Britons could catch a glimpse of the aurora until Tuesday.
The aurora borealis has been brought on by two large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the sun, known as coronal mass ejections.
These ejections can travel at speeds of up to several million kilometres per hour and, when directed towards Earth, can interact with our planet’s magnetic field.
This interaction can trigger geomagnetic storms, which in turn can produce displays of the aurora.
“Two glancing coronal mass ejections followed by a coronal hole high-speed stream bring a daily chance of enhancing the auroral oval, with sightings possible across Scotland and similar geomagnetic longitudes where skies are clear between 10 and 13 Oct,” the forecaster wrote in its space weather report.
In an alert on Saturday, the NOAA warned of possible effects on “power grid, satellite ops and GPS”, as well as “high frequency communication degradation at higher latitudes”.
The US scientific agency said technological operators, sectors and authorities had been “notified”.
Source: “AOL Breaking”
