Northern Lights Dazzle Skywatchers Across Europe and North America With Vivid Colors

An X-class solar flare, the most extreme kind, that erupted on January 18, 2026, sent a coronal mass ejection racing toward Earth, and within 24 hours the result was visible from a Scottish lighthouse to the deserts of New Mexico. Scott Mellis was at Covesea Lighthouse in Lossiemouth, Scotland, on the night of January 19 when vivid green auroras and a patch of red blazed behind the tall structure. Skywatchers benefited from near-new moon conditions, meaning the sky was free from lunar glare — ideal circumstances for capturing what Mellis described in an email as a singular experience. "Wow, what a night it was last night with the sky erupting in colour," he said.

Mellis was far from alone. Across France, three photographers documented the same event from wildly different backdrops. Lou Benoist pointed his camera toward the cliffs of Etretat, where subtle green auroras leaked through a gap in the clouds above the dramatic chalk formations. In Portsall on the western coast, Oscar Chuberre captured a vibrant red aurora dominating the sky with bright green below it, the lights from houses lining the bay reflected in the water beneath. Further south along the Brittany coastline, Mathieu Rivrin assembled a timelapse above the Côte de Granit Rose, the Pink Granite Coast, posted to X on January 20, 2026. In Germany, photographer Sascha Schuermann recorded vivid red and green auroras filling the sky above North Rhine-Westphalia, trees silhouetted in the foreground.

The display stretched deep into North America. Aurora chaser Alex Masse, shooting from Kerwood, Ontario, captured tall aurora pillars at 10:55 p.m. local time. Greg Gage photographed the lights from Deming, New Mexico, at 32 degrees latitude, a location well outside the zones where auroras routinely appear.

When a particularly powerful coronal mass ejection strikes Earth's magnetic field, the aurora may be seen at lower latitudes, making the display visible further south than usual. That physics explains Gage's New Mexico sighting. ESA's models predicted the CME would travel toward Earth at a speed initially estimated at 1,400 km/s, but its arrival time indicated an actual speed closer to 1,700 km/s. The resulting geomagnetic storm was categorized as G4, or "severe."

The palette of colors on display — red sitting above or alongside green — reflects the layered physics of the upper atmosphere. Different gases produce different colors: oxygen glows green, the most common color, or red at higher altitudes, while nitrogen can create blue or purplish hues. Red occurs at higher altitudes, typically between 150 and 200 miles above Earth's surface, and is the result of charged particles interacting with high-altitude oxygen atoms, which emit red or crimson light when excited. The prominent reds documented across Scotland, France, and Germany — unusual even during strong storms — pointed to the sheer altitude and energy of this particular event.

Solar Cycle 25 is near its peak, which occurred around 2024 to 2025, with strong activity continuing into 2026, meaning the current period remains an excellent time to observe aurora displays. The January 19-20 event confirmed that forecast in dramatic fashion, stretching from the Pink Granite Coast of Brittany to the Chihuahuan Desert edge of New Mexico in a single night.