Clouds ruin a second chance for people to see the ‘Northern Lights’ over Manchester

The Northern lights which were seen by many on the evening of Friday night and into Saturday morning was to happen again on Saturday night but clouds spoilt it for everyone.

Cloud cover is because of low pressure heading our way which means heavy showers during today (Sunday) and the small chance of a thunderstorm in some areas.

The Northern Lights is actually called ‘Aurora Borealis’ and is caused by activity on the Sun, its basically a solar storm, the Sun sometimes has huge flares which are earth facing, a huge flare will mean particles will travel and hit the earths atmosphere.

These particles heat up in our atmosphere and glow which is why we see the colours we do, the Earth has a protective layer so no issues for us however electronic equipment such as Satellites and GPS can go offline, even mobile networks and power grids can temporarily stop working although fortunately they also have systems in place to protect equipment.

If you missed it all don’t worry the Sun is now waking up from what is called a solar minimum where the sun has next to no activity, so it is expected the Northern Lights will be back again which will more than likely be for the Northern half of the UK.