Northern Lights set to light up Irish skies with a dazzling display this weekend

At the beginning of October, Ireland was treated to a stunning display of the Northern Lights, visible across the country.

The Northern Lights occur almost every night of the year in Arctic regions, but they are not always visible here as we are quite far south in comparison to their visibility.

According to Aurora Alerts Ireland, this weekend could be another great opportunity to see the phenomenon.

Read more: Met Eireann issues two weather warnings for six counties ahead of heavy rain

Read more: October Bank Holiday Supermarket opening hours for Tesco, Dunnes, Lidl, Aldi and SuperValu

The captivating lights are the result of collisions between gas particles in our atmosphere and charged particles ejected from the sun's atmosphere.

The colours of the auroras change due to the type of gas particles that are colliding at any given time.

Solar flare activity this week may mean that we will be able to see a good display of the lights in the coming days. The frequency of occurrence of solar flare activity varies with the 11-year solar cycle, and as we are at a particularly active time right now, this is why the northern lights are seen more frequently.

"The sun is back with a bang this morning with a powerful X3.3 solar flare observed on the sun at 4:57hrs and a very explosive fast moving CME seen leaving the sun estimated to be traveling around traveling 1.3 million mph which is around 2.9 million kilometres per second," reports Kenneth from Aurora Alerts Ireland via Donegal Weather Channel.

"Early signs this morning looked like any CME would be not directed towards earth due to the location of the sun spot and solar flare of the east limb of the sun but the latest LASCO C3 image shows a large halo CME which now shows there is a good earth directed component of the CME expected to hit earth in the next 48 to 72 hours."

"If the estimate speed of the CME is indeed 2.9 million kilometres per second then I would expect this to arrive in the next 48 hours. So we are looking at a estimated arrival time of early Saturday morning and between Saturday afternoon 26th of October."

"We could be looking at strong G3 storm conditions, the moon phase will be only around 30% with the moon not rising until the early hours."

You can track the phenomenon using the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that provides a thirty-minute forecast for the aurora.

To ensure a good view, the general rule is that the further north you are the better, but Ireland's dark sky zones are also good vantage points.

Ireland boasts two officially recognised dark sky places, Kerry International Dark Sky Reserve and Mayo International Dark Sky Park.

Different colours in the lights indicates different gas molecules.

Blue or purple auroras indicate the presence of nitrogen molecules, while red and green signify oxygen molecules at various concentrations.

Join RSVP Live's WhatsApp community to get celebrity news and our top stories