Why you probably missed the Northern Lights on Saturday

Geomagnetic storm caused lights to be more visible than normal on Friday

Many skygazers were left disappointed on Saturday night after the breathtaking sights produced by the Northern Lights 24 hours earlier failed to materialise on the same scale.

Beautiful hues of purple, red, green and blue filled the skies across the north on Friday with the lights, called the aurora borealis, even spotted as far south as London.

A geomagnetic storm caused the lights to be more visible than normal and they were also spotted across parts of northern Europe and North America.

Experts forecast this activity on Saturday would not be in the extreme “G5” category recorded on Friday, but instead weakened to “G3” - a level that meant sky-gazers remained optimistic about the chances of another fantastic display.

The aurora borealis, also known as the Northern Lights, glow in the sky over St Mary’s Lighthouse in Whitley Bay on Friday (PA)

The aurora borealis illuminate the night sky over a camper’s tent north of San Francisco in Middletown, California (AFP via Getty Images)

But geomagnetic levels fell below the threshold required just as darkness fell, and didn’t return to the required level until after midnight - at which point many people had called it a day.

The Met Office on Friday recorded the highest geomagnetic reading in the UK since 2003.

Images showed bands of red, purple and lime green illuminating the sky above Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crags in Holyrood Park, Edinburgh.

Further south, over St Mary’s Lighthouse in Whitley Bay on the north-east coast of England, locals flocked to the beaches to glimpse the spectacular lights there.

And in Liverpool, the lights could be seen behind Anthony Gormley’s Another Place statue.

The aurora borealis glow on the horizon at Another Place by Anthony Gormley, Crosby Beach (Peter Byrne/PA Wire)

Northern lights appear in the night sky above the Brocken peak in northern Germany early on Saturday (DPA)

Paul Norris, 47, from Allerton Bywater in West Yorkshire, said seeing the lights was “not what we’d expect on the outskirts of Leeds”.

He added: “My wife Emma and I woke our eldest daughter Phoebe, 12, up to see them. It could be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, it’s certainly the first time I’ve seen them. We spent about an hour watching them move across the sky.”

In Thorngumbald, East Yorkshire, Sarah Sharpe said spotting the lights was a “dream come true”.

She said: “It was truly spectacular, probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me. I’ve waited to see the Northern Lights for a very long time. A dream come true to see such a fantastic display.”

Some 6,000 miles away, campers north of San Francisco in California also enjoyed the brightly-coloured display.

On Saturday, some commercial planes, including Qatar and Emirates flights to the US west coast, opted for a more southerly route, likely due to the intense solar storms, as reported by Flightradar24.

A geomagnetic storm, triggered by an outburst of plasma from solar wind, could disrupt radio transmissions on Earth and potentially damage satellites in space.