Northern lights make spectacular appearance in Irish skies but you need a camera to see them

Nature’s most spectacular show will be on display on Monday night again as the Aurora Borealis (northern lights) makes another appearance in Irish skies.

The northern lights were prevalent across Irish skies on Sunday night and keen astrophotographers captured plenty of images.

Northern lights are caused by massive ejections of solar material by the sun which collide with the Earth’s magnetic field. The charged particles from the sun create the lights that appear in higher latitudes near the north and south poles.

The good news is that the sun is going through a lot of solar activity at present and there ought to be opportunities over the next year to see them.

Danielle Wilcox, resident astronomer in Blackrock Observatory in Cork, said the sun was going to have a lot more activity. “We had really strong northern lights. They came as far south as Cork. It’s a gorgeous, beautiful, rare occurrence.”

Getting a good view of the northern lights depends on having clear or partially clear skies but also on the moon being out of the way. A full moon makes the sky too bright. Light pollution is also a curse so getting away from bright cities also helps.

However, those who think they will be able to look up and see some of the beautiful salmon pink, yellow and green images you see on photographs are likely to be sorely disappointed. To the naked eye the aurora will look like a fuzzy glow on the horizon. The photographs you see are captured by photographers who use long exposures to capture the light that cannot be seen with the naked eye.

If you want to see the aurora with the naked eye you have to travel much further north to places like Iceland and northern Finland.

Landscape photographer Bríd O’Neill took a beautiful photograph of the aurora framed by an abandoned lighthouse in Mornington, Co Meath, just off a beach at the mouth of the river Boyne facing north.

She put her camera on a tripod and exposed the photograph for eight seconds. “I couldn’t see anything, it was only after taking exposures from the camera that I knew I had the image. People think they are going to see a big show. Maybe in the Arctic Circle, but not here. We are going to have this for the next year. If we get some clear skies we could get lucky. Normally you’d only see them in places like Donegal, but we are getting them all over the country now.”