Stunning Northern Lights illuminate skies across the UK

The northern lights illuminated the skies on Sunday night (5 November) with confirmed sightings spread across the UK.

Stunning footage shows the sky lit up by the aurora borealis.

The Met Office said the lights were “observed across Scotland, clearly visible from Shetland webcams” and sightings were reported across some central and eastern parts of England.

Professor Don Pollacco, from the physics department at the University of Warwick, said the phenomenon was 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.”