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Showing posts from May 17, 2024

Experts issue Northern Lights red alert with aurora visible across London and UK tonight

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The Northern Lights are at it again for their latest incredibly rare showing in UK skies. Experts at Auroura Watch UK have forecasted a red alert for geomagnetic activity this evening (Friday) in London and the UK. These geomagnetic events cause what we call aurora borealis. Ever since their first dramatic showing on May 10, people across the Northern Hemisphere have been pointing their phones to the skies in hopes of capturing the beautiful green and purple lights dancing across the sky. The Met Office predicted tonight could have another coronal mass ejection from the sun causing an interaction with the Earth's magnetic field producing the amazing lights and it appears they were right. Aroura Watch UK, run by scientists at the Planetary Physics group at Lancaster University, has published a bar chart showing that the base rate of geomagnetic activity is around 30 to 40 nanoteslas (a unit for measuring magnetism) but at 7pm BST this hit 500 nanoteslas. This massive jump is li...