THE Northern Lights danced across the skies over Dorset and the New Forest on Thursday night.
Spectators rushed out of their homes to capture the dazzling display on camera.
Photographers from the Daily Echo’s Camera Club on Facebook were among those who took images of phenomenon also known as the aurora borealis.
They rushed out to beauty spots with very little light pollution to take images of the natural wonder including at Horton Tower, the New Forest, Portland Bill and the seafront.
Read more: Why have Northern Lights sightings become more frequent in recent years?
Some were even able to take pictures from their back gardens and bedroom windows.
Vibrant shades of pink, purple, yellow, red and green lit up the night.
The Met Office said there had been “more space weather events in recent months”, including the Northern Lights, because the sun was nearing the peak of its solar cycle.
The auroras on Earth, which are most commonly seen over high polar latitudes but can spread south, are chiefly influenced by geomagnetic storms which originate from activity on the Sun.
The sun works on a cycle of around 11 years called the solar cycle – with peak sunspot activity on the surface of the Sun referred to as solar maximum.
Sunspots give the potential for Earth-directed releases of large bursts of energy, called coronal mass ejections, which can lead to aurora visibility.
Aurora displays occur when charged particles collide with gases in the Earth’s atmosphere around the magnetic poles.
As they collide, light is emitted at various wavelengths, creating colourful displays in the sky.
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