Our Head of Physics, and some of our Sixth Form students, managed to capture images of the aurora borealis (Northern Lights) across Chelmsford and Chelmer Park on Friday 10th May. 

"The giant sunspot region AR3663 could clearly be seen by projecting an image of the sun onto some card. At more than 15 times the diameter of the Earth, this region was responsible for the huge coronal mass ejection (CME) which resulted the aurora borealis (Northern Lights) being visible in Chelmsford.

During solar flares charged particles are ejected from the sun’s corona and travel towards Earth at speeds between 0.2% and 0.6% of the speed of light. Although these particles are very fast they are not as fast as light so it can be a day or two after a flare is observed that the charged particles arrive at Earth.

The Earth’s magnetic field affects the movement of the charged particles. The charge particles travel rapidly along helical paths around magnetic field lines eventually entering the Earth’s atmosphere near the poles

If charged particles collide with atoms and molecules in the atmosphere they ionising them. This produces the coloured lights that we call the aurora. The colours of the aurora depend on the element that has been ionised. Oxygen produces green and nitrogen produces red, blue and purple.

The stream of charged particles disturbed the Earth’s magnetic field and can severely affect radio communications, satellite electronics and electrical transmission systems.

The phone camera was set to a 2 second exposure with an ISO1000 and Exposure Value (EV) of -3.0."

Dr T Ghoneim, Head of Physics

The site AuroraWatch UK status (lancs.ac.uk) has a good app that can be used to set up alerts for when auroras are likely to be visible over the whole of the UK.

SpaceWeatherLive.com | Real-time data and plots auroral activity | SpaceWeatherLive.com is a good site for seeing the sun’s activity.