For most people in Britain the aurora is something you travel to Norway or Iceland to see. But every so often the Sun sends a storm big enough to bring it much further south. On the night of 10 May 2024 the northern lights were photographed from Shetland to Cornwall, and in October 2024 it happened again. With the right warning and a clear northern horizon, you do not need to leave the country.
What you are actually seeing
The Sun constantly blows a stream of charged particles into space, the solar wind. Now and then it throws out a far larger cloud, a coronal mass ejection. When one of those hits Earth, our magnetic field funnels the particles down towards the polar regions, where they slam into the upper atmosphere and make it glow.
The colour tells you what is being hit, and how high. Oxygen around 100 to 250 km up gives the familiar green. Oxygen higher still glows a deep red, which is why the aurora seen from southern England is often red: we are looking at the very top of a display centred much further north. Nitrogen adds pinks and purples along the lower edge.
Why the chances are good right now
The Sun runs on a cycle of roughly eleven years, swinging between quiet and active. The current cycle peaked around late 2024 and 2025, and large storms can keep coming for several years after the peak. The coming autumns and winters are some of the best opportunities British observers will get for a decade.
The months around the equinoxes, March and September, also tend to produce more geomagnetic activity than midsummer or midwinter, thanks to the way Earth's magnetic field lines up with the solar wind at those times of year.
Where to look from
- Shetland, Orkney and Caithness see the aurora on a good number of nights every winter. Shetlanders call it the mirrie dancers.
- The rest of Scotland and northern England need a moderate storm. The dark sky parks at Galloway, Northumberland and Tomintoul are ideal.
- The Midlands, Wales and the south need a strong storm, but when one arrives, anywhere with a low, dark northern horizon will do. A beach facing north or a hilltop away from town works well.
How to know when
Two free services are worth signing up to. AuroraWatch UK, run by Lancaster University, sends an alert when its magnetometers see disturbance over Britain. The Met Office Space Weather service publishes a forecast of aurora visibility for the next few days. When both are excited and the sky is clear, go outside.
Your phone sees more than you do
To the eye, a faint aurora is often a grey-white arch or a set of pale pillars. Your camera will show it green and red.
Our eyes are poor at seeing colour in dim light, while a phone's night mode gathers light for several seconds. If you suspect something odd low in the north, take a photograph. It is the quickest way to tell an aurora from cloud lit by a distant town. There are more tips in our guide to photographing the night sky with your phone.
And before you head out, switch on Night vision at the top of this page. It keeps the screen from ruining your dark adaptation while you wait.
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