North Wales was treated to a taste of the spectacular Northern Lights last night. Normally nature's light show is confined to countries further north, including Norway and Iceland.
But every now and again the wonders of the aurora borealis creep further south when conditions are right. They light up the sky with breathtaking, spectral colours, illuminating the heavens.
Phil Williams captured a stunning image at Melin Llynon at Llanddeusant on Anglesey.
Lynsey Hedley was another who managed to capture the spectacle on camera with pictures taken from Gwaenysgor viewpoint, near Prestatyn, showing the green ethereal glow of the Northern Lights in the distance (pic below). She snapped these photos at 6.30pm last night. Trystan Jones also took a great photo of the lights over Conwy Beach, which illuminated the sky with green, pink and red colours (main pic).
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The lights also illuminated the skies on Sunday night with the Met Office confirming sightings spread across the UK, reports PA. The Met Office said the lights were “observed across Scotland, clearly visible from Shetland webcams, and sightings reported across some central and eastern parts of England”.
Professor Don Pollacco, department of physics at the University of Warwick, said the phenomenon was caused by “the interaction of particles coming from the sun, the solar wind, with the Earth’s atmosphere – channelled to the polar regions by the Earth’s magnetic field. It’s actually a bit like iron filings and the field of a bar magnetic.
“The solar wind contains more particles when there are sun spots, as these are regions on the sun’s surface where the magnetic field is interacting with the plasma in the sun, and the particles can be released.
“Once the particles are channelled into the Earth’s atmosphere they interact with molecules and have distinctive colours (eg oxygen molecules produce green light, nitrogen red light etc) and patterns such as light emissions that look like curtains or spotlights.
“These shapes change quickly over timescales of minutes/seconds.”
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