Why are we seeing the Northern Lights more often and so far south?

It felt like a once-in-a-lifetime experience, seeing the Northern Lights in the UK on Tuesday night.

But the thing is, for Josh Yonish, a 22-year-old geologist, he’d already seen them before up in Birmingham in May, as countless other Britons did.

Now there they were once again above them, stripes of green, blue, pink and purple dancing across the night sky as the stars began to shine.

‘To be seeing one of the natural wonders of the world through my bedroom window in northeast London on a cold October night felt quite surreal,’ Josh tells Metro.

‘Feels like I should be paying money to go to Iceland or Finland to see them, so I’m grateful for that!’

But why is the UK seeing this spectacular sight so often this year?

What are the Northern Lights?

Aurora Borealis (no, not that actor fr