The Northern Lights lit up the skies above Brighton and Hove tonight.
Although the atmospheric phenomema was hard to see with the naked eye, photographers were able to capture it in all its glory – even with a simple smartphone camera.
The lights were visible because of a geomagnetic storm caused by solar outburst which reached Earth on Friday afternoon.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued a rare severe warning earlier today.
“For most people here on planet Earth, they won’t have to do anything,” said Rob Steenburgh, a scientist with the NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Centre.
But it was hard to predict and experts stressed it would not be the dramatic curtains of colour normally associated with the northern lights, but more like splashes of greenish hues.
“That’s really the gift from space weather – the aurora,” said Mr Steenburgh.
He and his colleagues said the best aurora views may come from phone cameras, which are better at capturing light than the naked eye.
Snap a picture of the sky and “there might be actually a nice little treat there for you”, said Mike Bettwy, operations chief for the prediction centre.
The most intense solar storm in recorded history, in 1859, prompted auroras in central America and possibly even Hawaii.
“We are not anticipating that” but it could come close, said NOAA space weather forecaster Shawn Dahl.
This storm – ranked 4 on a scale of 1 to 5 – poses a risk for high-voltage transmission lines for power grids, not the electrical lines ordinarily found in people’s homes, Mr Dahl told reporters.
Satellites could also be affected, which in turn could disrupt navigation and communication services here on Earth.
An extreme geomagnetic storm in 2003, for example, took out power in Sweden and damaged power transformers in South Africa.
Impressive Northern Lights above @RAFBenson tonight. The Benson crew have been busy assisting @ThamesVP but managed to grab this picture between jobs #NorthernLights ^LJ pic.twitter.com/fcPU4HsUME
— NPAS South East Region (@NPASSouthEast) May 10, 2024
Even when the storm is over, signals between GPS satellites and ground receivers could be scrambled or lost, according to the NOAA.
But there are so many navigation satellites that any outages should not last long, Mr Steenburgh noted.
The sun has produced strong solar flares since Wednesday, resulting in at least seven outbursts of plasma.
Each eruption – known as a coronal mass ejection – can contain billions of tons of plasma and magnetic field from the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona.
How many pics is too many?🤣 pic.twitter.com/63SLzJ3iOB
— Brett Mendoza💙 (@BrettMendoza_) May 10, 2024
The flares seem to be associated with a sunspot that is 16 times the diameter of Earth, according to the NOAA.
It is all part of the solar activity that is ramping up as the sun approaches the peak of its 11-year cycle.
Nasa said the storm posed no serious threat to the seven astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
The biggest concern is the increased radiation levels, and the crew could move to a better shielded part of the station if necessary, according to Mr Steenburgh.
Increased radiation could also threaten some of Nasa’s science satellites.
Extremely sensitive instruments will be turned off, if necessary, to avoid damage, said Antti Pulkkinen, director of the space agency’s heliophysics science division.
Several sun-focused spacecraft are monitoring all the action.
“This is exactly the kinds of things we want to observe,” Mr Pulkkinen said.
So that’s why my telly didn’t work properly last night
It was a shame that there was nothing to see in the sky on Saturday night, but the gatherings on the hills at night with people in a great mood and full of anticipation, it was like a free party. It was a beautiful moment.
The sky may not have become illuminated, but the general feel-good atmosphere lit up the weekend.