Parts of Britain could enjoy another celestial show this evening, with the Northern Lights visible once again.
The nation enjoyed spectacular views of the Aurora Borealis last weekend, with beautiful displays visible in Essex, Cambridgeshire and Berkshire.
Sky-gazers also reported seeing them in Kent, Suffolk and Hampshire.
Meanwhile Ireland’s weather service Met Eireann shared pictures of the lights in both Dublin and County Clare’s Shannon Airport.
Now, parts of northern Britain have been told to keep their eyes peeled for a second instalment with a red alert issued, which indicates the aurora could be visible with the naked eye anywhere in the UK.
AuroraWatch UK, run by scientists in the Space and Planetary Physics group at Lancaster University’s Department of Physics, said: “Aurora is likely to be visible by eye from Scotland, northern England and Northern Ireland; possibly visible from elsewhere in the UK.
“Photographs of aurora are likely from anywhere in the UK.”
The Met Office’s space weather department says “enhancement to the aurora is likely into early May 18 in the Northern Hemisphere.
“The aurora may become visible as far south as parts of Scotland where skies are clear.
“Mainly background aurora conditions are expected thereafter.”
Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) are large expulsions of plasma from the sun.
The Northern Lights have been more visible as a result of an “extreme” geomagnetic storm, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has explained.
The NOAA said the G5 geomagnetic storm, the strongest level, reached Earth on Thursday. It was caused by a “large, complex” sunspot cluster 17 times the diameter of the Earth.
The last storm with a G5 rating hit in October 2003, causing power outages in Sweden.
Speaking to Express.co.uk in 2019, Mike Willis, head of space safety with the UK Space Agency, said Britain needs to be prepared for the widespread disruption a solar storm comparable with the so-called Carrington event of 1859 would bring.
He explained: “What we are concerned about is the extreme events which would be much more than your normal flare. “This could actually cause serious disruption if we don’t forecast it and if we don’t do anything about it.
“There was a report published a couple of years ago now which looked at a worst-case, once-in-100 year event and concluded that the cost would be, which concluded that the cost would be £5billion over five days, so that’s the sort of losses.”
He added: “It’s things like logistics, it’s things like people not being able to navigate, things like timing systems, emergency services.
“There’s also the power grids – one of the impacts of space weather is to create geomagnetic activity which induces currents in long flexible conductors, and these are direct currents.”
