Professor Don Pollacco, Department of Physics, University of Warwick, said: “The Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) are caused by the interaction of particles coming from the Sun, the Solar Wind, with the Earth’s atmosphere – channelled to the polar regions by the Earth’s magnetic field. It’s actually a bit like iron filings and the field of a bar magnetic. The Solar wind contains more particles when there are Sun spots, as these are regions on the Sun’s surface where the magnetic field is interacting with the plasma in the Sun, and the particles can be released.

“Once the particles are channelled into the Earth’s atmosphere they interact with molecules and have distinctive colours (eg Oxygen molecules produce green light, Nitrogen red light etc) and patterns such as light emissions that look like curtains or spotlights. These shapes over change quickly over timescales of minutes/seconds.

“To predict exactly where you can see the northern lights is difficult as conditions can change quickly. The current ‘storm’ is said to be visible from northern England but they are notoriously difficult to predict. However, one thing is for sure, and that is that you are unlikely to see them from a brightly lit city environment – you need to go somewhere dark and look towards the northern horizon (look for the North Star). So, you would preferably be in the countryside away from street lights. Of course it also needs to clear!”