Northern Lights: The aurora that dazzled us in 2024

This year the night skies have been lit up by some breathtaking Northern Lights displays.

For most of us the chance to see the aurora is just a bucket list wish involving costly travel to the Arctic Circle and then not always getting the big reward.

In 2024, however, the lights were visible unusually far south, with people reporting stunning sightings across southern England on multiple occasions.

Featuring a kaleidoscope of reds, greens, purples and blues, and with even a rare STEVE phenomenon putting in an appearance, it was best year for these spectacles for 20 years.

The main reason why the lights have been so dazzling is because we are at a peak in the Sun's 11-year cycle of activity.

During this phase there is an increase in the number of eruptions from the Sun, including solar flares and coronal mass ejections.

These send powerful bursts of energy and material into space, causing - amongst other things - the aurora that we see from Earth.

The increase in eruptions is brought about by the Sun's magnetic poles flipping. On Earth that would be like the North and South Poles swapping places.

Originally the Sun's activity was expected to peak in the latter half of 2025 but scientists from NASA, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency and the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel announced that the Sun reached its maximum in October 2024.

The last peak in the Sun's activity - known as the "solar maximum" - was around 2014.

Now technology has improved it means we have better forecasts, apps and social media to give us real-time information on solar activity.

A decade ago phone cameras had lower resolutions and fewer photographic features. Now, though, smartphones are capable of taking some stunning pictures (as demonstrated by the photos taken by BBC Weather Watchers).

Space weather forecasting was also generally not as well developed as it is now.

The Stereo satellites that are positioned either side of the Sun and which study and help improve space weather forecasts were not in position until 2011. They gave solar physicists the first 360-degree view of our star.

And the Met Office had only just opened its dedicated Space Weather Operations Centre in 2014.