If you want a decent chance of seeing aurora in the UK, the best method is:
Use a website such as spaceweather.com and www.swpc.noaa.gov to notify you of incoming CMEs. The SWPC will generally give a predication of the strength of the storm. A G3 is ok, G4 is better. G5 is put down everything and stay outside all night awesome.
Use the met office cloud cover map to check cloud for your area around the days of the predicted arrival. You may need to make plans to drive to a better area.
Get a chair, camera, tripod, and a bag full of snacks, and keep them ready by the door.
Wait for it to get dark.
Go and sit outside somewhere in an area with low light pollution. Be prepared to sit outside for hours. A collection of good podcasts and/or audiobooks helps.
Check the sky with the camera, both the northern horizon and above you for aurora. If you are lucky, they may become visible with the naked eye. On Friday, I could see them as wispy cloud most of the time, but for a brief period around 23:15 they became visible in full colour, and were glorious.
Auroras aren’t typically visible to the naked eye anywhere in the UK; you’d have to have god-like luck to be able to see anything on the South Coast that wasn’t using a long-exposure.
Having seen the Aurora several times from the years in Scotland it was pretty cool to look out of the window last night and see Cathedral surrounded by very faint green and red.
The best I’ve seen them without a camera was in the Outer Hebrides, zero light pollution and they were dancing!
