Here’s why different colour Northern Lights can appear in the sky [Video]

THE NORTHERN LIGHTS brightened the sky in parts of Ireland last night and many people have shared the striking imagery on social media from all over the country.

Aurora borealis, or the Northern Lights, occurs as a result of charged particles from the sun launched along Earth’s magnetic field colliding with gases in Earth’s upper atmosphere.

In simpler terms, particular pieces of the Sun’s crust can shed and later make its way towards and drop down into the Earth’s atmosphere.

Those pieces then mix with the different types of gas particles in the air and, depending on the type of gas and the amount of pieces of shedding, different colours appear in the sky.

According to Met Éireann, the different colours indicate different things.

Blue and purple lights indicate that there is a high amount of nitrogen in the atmosphere and that a large volume of charged particles from the Sun have made their way to the Earth. This is called intense solar activity.

The Northern Lights last …