The northern lights were spotted across Scotland, North Wales, Cambridgeshire and Shropshire (Picture: Dominic Darvell/pictureexclusive)
The northern lights were seen across the UK on Sunday and could appear again on Monday night, according to the Meteorological Office.
The Met Office tweeted a series of pictures taken by members of the public which captured the light phenomenon in North Uist in Scotland, North Wales, Cambridgeshire and Shropshire.
‘A coronal hole high speed stream arrived this evening combined with a rather fast coronal mass ejection leading to Aurora sightings across the UK,’ tweeted the national weather service.
In a separate tweet, it encouraged users to upload pictures of any other sightings using the hashtag #LoveUKWeather.
The Met Office also said there is a chance of seeing the northern lights again on Monday night.
Passengers on a night flight from Norway were treated to a stunning show of aurora from the sky (Picture: Paul Botten / SWNS)
It wasn’t just people on the ground that got to see the lights, passengers on a delayed flight from Norway caught the jaw-dropping display of northern lights from the sky.
An Essex photographer, Paul Botten, 50 managed to snap the vibrant colours on his iPhone at 30,000ft.
‘I was testing the capabilities of the IPhone 13 Max against DSLR cameras and was amazed to see the results, especially when unexpectedly seeing them on a blizzard-related delay out from Tromso,’ said Botten.
‘We were supposed to take off at 4pm and the delay meant it was darkness when we got through the clouds and the aurora was already very active even at 6:30pm, with sunset visible way off to the west that you can see in the pictures,’
‘The captain turned off the lights and people ended up taking pictures for the next 15 minutes on their phones,’
‘The delay meant an overnight stay in Oslo, as we missed our connecting flight to Heathrow, but most of the plane were happy in a strange way as the free light show was the pay off,’
Royal Museums Greenwich explains on its website that the lights are caused by solar storms on the surface of the sun giving out clouds of electrically charged particles which can travel millions of miles and collide with the Earth.
Most particles are deflected away but some are captured in the Earth’s magnetic field and accelerate down towards the north and south poles, colliding with atoms and molecules in the Earth’s atmosphere, according to the observatory.
The lights are the product of this collision between atoms and molecules from the Earth’s atmosphere and particles from the sun.
In November last year, strong light displays were witnessed across Scotland.
A Met Office spokesperson said the rare sightings of the aurora borealis further south in the UK on Sunday night were due to the ‘strength’ of a geomagnetic storm and the ‘strip of cloudless skies’ in southern regions.
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The lights could appear again on Monday night.
