STOCKHOLM – Stargazers were out in force in northern Europe on Tuesday, hoping to be awed by a spectacular showing of northern lights after the most powerful solar storm in six years.
Even before particles from that storm reached the Earth on Tuesday, the aurora borealis was dancing across the sky as far south as Ireland and England, where people rarely get a chance to catch the stunning light show.
“The lights appear as green and red mist. It’s been mostly green the past few nights. I don’t know if that’s just special for Ireland,” said Gerard O’Kane, a 41-year-old taxi driver and vice chairman of the Buncrana Camera Club in County Donegal in Ireland’s northwest corner.
He and at least two dozen amateur photographers were meeting after dark at a local beach for an all-night stakeout. They’ve been shooting the horizon from dozens of locations since Friday night.
An aurora appears when a magnetic solar wind slams into the Earth’s magnetic field, exciting electrons of oxygen and nitrogen.
The northern lights are sometimes seen from northern Scotland, but they were also visible Monday night from northeast England and Ireland, where such sightings are a rarity.
Those auroras were likely just variations in normal background solar
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