The Northern Lights are expected to be visible again in as little as 10 days as space weather experts suggest more geomagnetic storms could hit.
Bands of pink and green light were spotted across the UK after a huge solar storm triggered last week’s rare sighting. The latest sun storm activity follows a series of solar flares combined to form a huge burst of solar plasma.
Met Office space weather expert Krista Hammond said the sunspot region will be rotated back towards Earth in 10 to 12 days’ time – paving the way for another display of the Northern Lights.
She said: “The sunspot region will be be coming back round onto the Earth facing side of the sun.”
The lights, or aurora borealis, are seen in the sky when electrically charged particles from the sun travel across space and collide with Earth’s atmosphere.
The sun is currently in the most active period of its 11-year cycle.
Hammond added: “We’re currently at solar maximum and we’re seeing more sunspots.
“If we see more sunspots, we see this increased frequency in space weather and therefore the aurora.”
The phenomenon is likely to occur more frequently “in the coming weeks, months and years”.
However, Hammond warned that a full repeat of last weekend’s display is “probably quite slim”.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes around and there’s some activity on it, but it won’t be I doubt, a repeat performance,” she said.
This week has seen unprecedented numbers of alerts from AuroraWatch, an open-to-the-public aurora monitoring service.
The service, run by scientists in the Space and Planetary Physics group at Lancaster University’s Department of Physics, gives would-be spotters regular alerts and mapping telling them when and where to see the phenomenon.
But where displays can be seen in the UK is dictated by the “strength of geomagnetic storming”, Hammond said.
She added: “There are a couple of mass ejections on their way to Earth.
“They’re a lot less powerful than what we saw last weekend, but they could bring aurora displays across predominantly northern parts of the UK, such as Scotland, Northern Ireland, north of England.”
