Met Office gives chances of seeing Northern Lights tonight after stunning display in northern England

The northern lights were visible in parts of the UK on Sunday night - but it’s ‘unlikely’ they’ll be visible tonight, the Met Office said. There were confirmed sightings of the aurora borealis spread across the country on November 5.

According to the Met Office, the lights were “observed across Scotland, clearly visible from Shetland webcams, and sightings reported across some central and eastern parts of England”. On Sunday, the Met said the best chances to see the northern lights, also known as aurora borealis, were in Scotland but “it could be possible as far south as central Wales and England”.

However, if you were hoping to catch a glimpse of them again tonight then don’t get your hopes up. The Met Office said that there’s ‘only a chance’ there will be sightings in northern Scotland tonight.

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In its space forecast, The Met Office said: “It is presumed that the majority of the enhanced aurora seen overnight on 05 Nov into 06 Nov has now passed, with only a chance of aurora sightings expected across northern Scotland for the remainder of 06 Nov and perhaps into 07 Nov. Thereafter aurora sightings are expected to become unlikely.”

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