On Friday the 10th and Saturday the 11th, the Northern Lights paid a visit to the UK.
Huddersfield residents arguably got the most incredible views up on Castle Hill, seeing miles upon miles of the phenonanom.
Thousands of people fly hours across the globe every year to see the lights in Iceland, Norway, Lapland and Greenland, so why were they suddenly in the UK?
The Northern Lights, also known as a geometric storm or an aurora, is caused when a sunspot creates large solar flares directed towards Earth.
An explosion of plasma and Magnetic fields, also known as a coronal mass ejection, come from the sun’s corona and cause the blue, pink and purple shapes that flutter across the sky.
In simpler, less sciency words, it’s when magnetic fields that come from the sun, hits the Earth’s gases which causes the gases to light up and create the spectacle.
The lights were seen from Scotland all the way down to London, which surprised many due to London’s high light pollution rate.
After the sights on Friday, hundreds of Huddersfield residents trekked up to Castle Hill to hopefully see them again on the Saturday.
Not only were they left disappointed, but also stuck. Police were called to assist over 200 cars that were stuck in back to back traffic causing tempers to rise and patience to run thin.
Now for the real question on everyone’s minds, why the hell were there Northern Lights in the UK?!
Well the geomagnetic storm usually takes place in an area called the aurora oval which covers the North and South poles where the lights are typically seen, but when activity between the Earth’s atmosphere and the solar flares are strong, the aurora oval can expand.
In this instance, it expanded all the way to the UK.
The activity was so strong, it even put immense pressures on internet satellties, including Elon Musk’s Starlink.
Weather physicist Tamitha Skov spoke on the issue, saying “Those poor Starlink birds are slamming on their thrusters right now, fighting to stay in the sky” on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Cancel your bucket list trip to Iceland, you might as well just get a deck chair out in your back garden instead and cross your fingers, it’d save you thousands.