Northern lights last night — were they visible?

Check what happened last night

Three sources give you the answer quickly, and each covers a slightly different angle.

Reading the NOAA Kp chart

The 3-day planetary K-index chart at NOAA SWPC is the standard reference for recent geomagnetic activity. It plots Kp as coloured bars over the past 72 hours, with each bar spanning a 3-hour window. The most recent bar on the right is the current or most recently completed period.

Colour coding on the NOAA chart follows a consistent convention:

Look at the bars covering last night's local dark hours (roughly 21:00-02:00 your time). Find the peak Kp value from that period and note it. That is the number to compare against your location's threshold.

Was aurora visible at your location last night?

Two conditions must be met simultaneously for a visible display: the Kp must have exceeded your location's threshold, and skies must have been clear.

Find your location's Kp threshold on the locations page. Each location page lists the minimum Kp needed for aurora to reach that latitude from a dark site. If last night's peak Kp exceeded that number, geomagnetic conditions were sufficient. Whether you would have seen anything then comes down to cloud cover.

For cloud cover records from last night, Weather Underground (wunderground.com) stores hourly historical observations at weather stations worldwide and can tell you sky conditions for your nearest station. The Met Office also publishes hourly synoptic data for UK locations. If cloud cover was 6 oktas or above for the relevant hours, the aurora almost certainly went unseen overhead regardless of Kp.

A borderline Kp combined with heavy overcast is the most common frustration. The storm happened; the sky did not cooperate. Setting up alerts before the next event - and having a clear-sky plan ready - is the only reliable fix.

Community sighting reports

The fastest confirmation of an aurora sighting is eyewitness evidence from the night itself. Several communities collect this reliably.

Reddit is the most active source. The subreddits r/AuroraBorealis and r/aurora receive posts within hours of any significant event, with photographs and location data. Country-specific subreddits - r/Scotland, r/ireland, r/polska, r/norge - often have more localised reports that help narrow down visibility boundaries. Photographs posted on the night are the most useful, since they include timestamps and capture the actual display brightness.

AuroraWatch UK at aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk publishes colour-coded alerts (yellow, amber, red) with post-event summaries from their magnetometer network. If the site recorded a red alert last night, the magnetic disturbance was strong enough for aurora over the UK. SpaceWeatherLive maintains an event log with community observations and photographs submitted by users.

Searching Twitter/X for "aurora" with a date filter set to last night surfaces real-time reports from the public, including location data and photographs. This is most useful for events that were widespread and generated significant public reaction.

Never miss the next event

Checking after the fact is frustrating when the sky was clear and you stayed inside. The problem is notification lag: most people find out about aurora activity from social media after the fact, when the display is already fading.

NOAA's free email alert service at swpc.noaa.gov/content/email-subscription-service sends two types of notifications. Geomagnetic storm watches arrive 12-72 hours ahead of a predicted CME arrival - enough time to plan a clear-sky drive. Geomagnetic storm warnings arrive 1-3 hours before the storm threshold is crossed - enough time to get to a dark site if you are already prepared.

The northern lights alert guide explains exactly how to set up these notifications and how to calibrate the thresholds to your location's Kp requirement. The difference between catching an event and missing it is almost always a matter of notification timing.

Recent notable storms

Knowing what a significant event looks like helps calibrate expectations. These two examples bracket the range of what happens during solar maximum.

The G5 storm of 10-11 May 2024 reached Kp 9 - the top of the scale - for the first time since October 2003. Aurora was photographed from Spain, Mexico, Florida, and New Zealand's North Island. Across the UK, aurora was visible from every county including London and the south coast. Red aurora, produced by oxygen atoms at 200-300 km altitude, appeared at latitudes that had not seen it in a generation. The NOAA Kp chart for that date shows a solid run of Kp 8-9 bars lasting most of 10 May.

A more typical scenario: a G2 event (Kp 6) in early 2026 put aurora over northern England and all of Scotland for one clear night. These events - five to ten per year during solar maximum - are the backbone of UK aurora watching. Bright enough for naked-eye viewing from dark sites north of 54°N, borderline from cities, invisible further south. This is the event type to aim for if you are planning a trip.

Solar activity is declining gradually from the 2024-2026 maximum but remains elevated. G2-G3 events (Kp 6-7) continue to occur more frequently than at solar minimum. The solar maximum guide gives more context on what to expect through the rest of the cycle.

Track the aurora oval in real time

If you want to know whether aurora is active right now rather than last night, the live aurora oval map on the forecast page shows current OVATION model output. The OVATION model uses live solar wind data from NASA's DSCOVR satellite to calculate the position and intensity of the auroral oval in near-real time.

During an active event, the oval expands toward lower latitudes and aurora probability increases across a wider area. The map shows this expansion visually, making it straightforward to assess whether the oval currently covers your region. During quiet conditions, the oval sits over the polar cap and mid-latitude probability is near zero.

For latitude-specific reach, the how far south guide maps each Kp level to the approximate geographic latitude it reaches. The northern lights scale guide explains what each G-scale level means for visibility at your latitude.