Met Office says Northern Lights could be visible across parts of UK tonight
The phenomenon paints the sky a range of vibrant colours
The Met Office has updated its space weather site to alert people that the Northern Lights may be visible from parts of the UK again tonight, March 26.
Space weather describes changing environmental conditions in near-Earth space. Magnetic fields, radiation, particles and matter, which have been ejected from the Sun, can interact with the Earth’s upper atmosphere and surrounding magnetic field to produce a variety of effects.
In its aurora forecasts, the Met Office states: "There is a chance of aurora sightings at times across northern Scotland this week, given clear night-time skies, with a slight chance of sightings across Southern Scotland and similar latitudes.
"This is due to a fast stream of solar wind from a coronal hole arriving on Wednesday 26th March, lasting until around Friday, March 28."
Over the past 24 hours, solar activity reached Moderate-class due to an isolated low level Moderate-flare from a small but slowly growing bipolar region in the northeast. There are currently four sunspot regions on the Earth-facing disc.
No clear Earth-directed coronal mass ejections were observed, though an eruption on the morning of March 25, may give a slight chance of a glance on day 4, March 29. Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the sun's atmosphere — the corona.
CMEs can wreak havoc with power grids, telecommunication networks and orbiting satellites and expose astronauts to dangerous doses of radiation. They can trigger impressive aurora displays that are visible at latitudes beyond their "normal" polar range.
Looking ahead to the rest of the week, the weather agency says "Solar winds are expected to rise, gradually increasing to become slightly elevated to elevated day 1 (26 Mar), perhaps becoming strong by day 2 (27 Mar) with the expected arrival of a fast stream of solar wind from an unusually prominent coronal hole feature.
"The enhanced geomagnetic activity is likely to persist into day 3 (28 Mar), before beginning to gradually ease by day 4 (29 Mar)."
It has been a fascinating week for stargazers this week. A large glowing spiral was spotted across the sky in the UK, Ireland and parts of Europe on Monday. Thousands of people took to social media with images and videos of the unusual cosmic object.
Users from across the UK and Europe discussed what the spinning light could possibly be, with X users speculating it could be anything from a portal to another dimension to evidence of aliens. Thousands also believed the cause to be frozen exhaust smoke from Elon Musk's Space X Falcon 9 rocket.
After receiving many reports about the swirl, the Met Office stated: "We've received many reports of an illuminated swirl in the sky this evening This is likely to be caused by the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, launched earlier today. The rocket's frozen exhaust plume appears to be spinning in the atmosphere and reflecting the sunlight, causing it to appear as a spiral in the sky."
It is understood that the sky spiral is generated by extra fuel that was released from the SpaceX rocket, around three hours earlier. In a post on X, SpaceX said: "Falcon 9's first stage has landed on LZ-1 in Florida" alongside a video of a rocket landing vertically at a landing zone."