A New Forest resident captured stunning photos of a rare celestial event.

Daily Echo Camera Club photographer Jason Evans captured photos of the Stable Aurora Red arc (SAR arc) over the New Forest on Wednesday night.

The faint red glow hugs close to the horizon and is associated with strong geomagnetic storms.

While traditional aurorae are caused by particles hitting the Earth's atmosphere, SAR arcs are generated by extreme thermal and kinetic energy in the atmosphere.

Jason was out late to try to photograph the northern lights, which were visible in parts of the UK on Wednesday.

While he said that his efforts were thwarted by cloud and rain when it was at its strongest, when the weather cleared the sky was "beautifully clear".

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"More interesting to me was just before we decided to call it a night my friend took a photo of a different area of the sky looking west and there was a faint but distinct reddish band of light. 

"Neither of us have observed this phenomena before.

"Once we got home we saw that indeed the SAR arc was widely observed in the UK that night and there's nothing else it could of been so that was a bonus, it's not as colourful or dynamic as true aurora but it is actually less common to see."