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Northern Lights spectacle seen across Irish skies

The Northern Lights over Ballycowan Castle in Co Offaly - Credit: Paul Moore
The Northern Lights over Ballycowan Castle in Co Offaly (Pic: Paul Moore)

The Northern Lights illuminated the night sky in many areas around Ireland last night.

The red and green spectacle was 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.

NorthernLights-MiltownMalbay-Clare
The sky above Miltown Malbay in Co Clare last night
The Northern Lights as seen from Bearna, Co Galway (Pic: Detta Doyle)
The Northern Lights as seen from Bearna, Co Galway (Pic: Detta Doyle)

Editor of Astronomy Ireland magazine David Moore 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.

Rathfarnham Northern Lights
Scenes from Rathfarnham, south Dublin (pic: Sam Conn)

"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 doughnut just gets fatter and it will get so fat that it can reach down as far as Ireland."


Read more: How Northern lights have fascinated Irish people for centuries


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".

Education and outreach officer at MTU Blackrock Castle Observatory in Cork Frances McCarthy said there was a chance people would see the aurora again tonight, but "it will be less than it was last night".

Speaking on RTÉ'S Morning Ireland, she said: "The sun is quite active -150 million kilometres away but bits of the surface can erupt and material from the sun can be shot across space in what is called a coronal mass ejection, so the material of the sun squirts out."

She said if that happens, and depending on magnetic fields, there is the possibility of an aurora.