Pembrokeshire was treated to a spectacular light show last night as the Northern Lights lit up the night sky in a spectacular array of colours.

(Image: Kerry Impey)

Members of both the Western Telegraph and Tivyside Advertiser Camera Clubs captured stunning vistas across the night sky all over both Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion.

The Met Office said that the northern lights occur as a consequence of solar activity and result from collisions of charged particles in the solar wind colliding with molecules in the earth's upper atmosphere.

(Image: Nick Cleary) Solar winds are charged particles that stream away from the sun at speeds of around 1 million miles per hour.

When the magnetic polarity of the solar wind is opposite to the earth's magnetic field, the two magnetic fields combine allowing these energetic particles to flow into the earth's magnetic north and south poles.

(Image: Lucy Crockford)

Auroras usually occur in a band called the annulus (a ring about 1,865 miles across) centred on the magnetic pole. The arrival of a coronal mass ejections (CME) from the sun can cause the annulus to expand, bringing the aurora to lower latitudes. It is under these circumstances that the lights can be seen in the UK.

(Image: Rebecca Ring) The Met Office says that depending on which gas molecules are hit and where they are in the atmosphere, different amounts of energy are released as different wavelengths of light.

(Image: Selena Jane)

Oxygen gives off green light when it is hit 60 miles above the earth, whilst at 100-200 miles rare, all-red auroras are produced. Nitrogen causes the sky to glow blue yet when higher in the atmosphere the glow has a purple hue.

You can see loads more amazing aurora pictures on the Western Telegraph and Tivyside Advertiser Camera Club Facebook pages, linked above.