Witness the Northern Lights: Incredible Aurora Borealis Over Ireland

The Northern Lights are illuminating the night sky in many areas around Ireland tonight. The red and green spectacle is being shared widely on social media. Aurora displays happen when charged particles collide with gases in the Earth's atmosphere around the magnetic poles. They are most commonly seen over high polar latitudes but can spread south and are mostly influenced by geomagnetic storms which originate from activity on the sun. David Moore, editor of Astronomy Ireland magazine said: "This is one of the fastest events ever seen, hurtling the 93 million miles from Sun to Earth in just 25 hours" when normally it takes between three and four days. He said "a huge geomagnetic storm is in progress" and it has arrived several hours earlier than what was predicted. The show, he said, could ebb and flow, get stronger or weaker, but watching as it changes is part of the fun. "There is a scale of one to five on these storms and this one was predicted at four, which means that for ireland, all the radiation coming in, is directed by our magnetic field to the North Pole. "When you look at it from Space it looks like a donut surrounding the North Pole, that donut just gets fatter and it will get so fat that it can reach down as far as Ireland." Mr Moore said that on rare occasions the aurora can go over Ireland, it happened in 2024 which made the Northern Lights visible overhead. He said the display is like a rain shower in a storm, "it can die away and appear again and that can last a few hours".