The northern lights have lit up the night sky with rare sightings across the UK and Europe.

The aurora borealis has been spotted in Whitley Bay on the north-east coast; Essex; Cambridgeshire; and Wokingham in Berkshire.

Kathleen Cunnea, in Great Horkesley, Essex, said: “It was absolutely stunning to see.”

Met Office spokesman Stephen Dixon said on Friday it was likely the Northern Lights could be seen.

He said: “Although the shorter nights will limit the visibility window, there’s a good chance to see the aurora, particularly on Friday night and especially in Scotland, Ireland and parts of northern England and Wales.

“There could even be visibility further south if you have the right equipment.

“Those conditions could continue on Saturday night but we still have to work out some details on where exactly that will be.”

Dixon said the combination of clear skies and enhanced activity from the sun reaching Earth would improve the chances of seeing the display.

Aurora displays occur when charged particles collide with gases in the Earth’s atmosphere around the magnetic poles.

In the northern hemisphere, most of this activity takes place within a band known as the aurora oval, covering latitudes between 60 and 75 degrees.

When activity is strong, this expands to cover a greater area – which is why displays can be occasionally seen as far south as the UK.

In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued a rare severe geomagnetic storm warning on Friday. It alerted operators of power plants and spacecraft in orbit to take precautions. NOAA says the storm could produce northern lights as far south as Alabama and northern California.

“For most people here on planet Earth, they won’t have to do anything,” said Rob Steenburgh, a scientist with NOAA’s space weather centre. “That’s really the gift from space weather – the aurora.”

Steenburgh and his colleagues said the best aurora views might come from phone cameras, which were better at capturing light than the naked eye.

Even when the storm is over, signals between GPS satellites and ground receivers could be scrambled or lost, according to NOAA. But there are so many navigation satellites that any outages should not last long, Steenburgh said.

The flares seem to be associated with a sunspot that is 16 times the diameter of Earth, according to NOAA. It’s all part of the solar activity that’s ramping up as the sun approaches the peak of its 11-year cycle.

Nasa said the storm posed no serious threat to the seven astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The biggest concern was increased radiation levels, and the crew could move to a better shielded part of the station if necessary, according to Steenburgh.

Increased radiation also could threaten some of Nasa’s science satellites. Extremely sensitive instruments would be turned off if necessary to avoid damage, said Antti Pulkkinen, director of the space agency’s heliophysics science division. Several sun-focused spacecraft were monitoring all the action.

“This is exactly the kinds of things we want to observe,” Pulkkinen said.

With PA Media and Associated Press