May 10, 2024, Brandenburg, Falkenhagen: Light green and slightly reddish northern lights shine at night … [+]
The dazzling northern lights on the 10th/11th. May was one of the strongest on record in the last 500 years, according to a NASA statement.
In another record-breaking claim, the British Geological Survey claimed that the UK’s auroras were the result of the most extreme and long-lasting geomagnetic storm recorded in the last 155 years.
And there’s a chance it could happen again.
“We will be studying this event for years,” said Teresa Nieves-Chinchilla, deputy director of NASA’s Space Weather Analysis Office for the Moon-Mars Mission (M2M). “It will help us test the limits of our models and understanding of solar storms.” The space agency added that it “may be one of the most powerful auroral events in the last 500 years.”
Simultaneous attacks
The solar storm on the 10th/11th May caused Northern lights (Northern Lights) can be visible as far as Florida in the Northern Hemisphere, while the Southern light (Southern Lights) appeared as far away as New Zealand.
NASA first detected the beginning of a solar storm on May 7, when two solar flares were spotted. Over the next four days, seven impressive eruptions occurred, all aimed at ejecting coronal mass ejections – clouds of charged particles – towards Earth. They traveled at different speeds and arrived at the same time.
“The CMEs all arrived largely at the same time, and the conditions were just right to produce a truly historic storm,” said Elizabeth MacDonald, NASA’s citizen science heliophysics lead and space scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Biggest since 2003
According to the BGS, the May geomagnetic storm, caused by a series of successive solar flares and the CMEs that followed, shares characteristics with some of the largest storms since 1869, most recently Geomagnetic Storm Halloween in 2003. Daily geomagnetic activity has been occurring since Recorded in 1869, it said.
The northern lights are created when the solar wind in space – charged particles from the sun – is accelerated along the field lines of the Earth’s magnetic field.
The Earth’s geomagnetic field is compared using measurements of horizontal magnetic field strength, which is typically around 30-50 nanoTesla (nT)m, according to BGS in Lerwick in the Sheland Islands in Scotland. They peaked at 800 nT on the evening of May 10th.
Return of Aurora?
The sunspot that caused the flares and CMEs, called AR13364, is currently facing Venus, which produced a huge X12-class solar flare on May 20. This was the strongest in the current solar cycle. As the sun rotates toward Earth, AR13364 is still expected to be active, triggering warnings of possible stronger geomagnetic storms.
A new article published in Nature states that more strong geomagnetic storms are expected in the next one to two years as the Sun approaches “solar maximum,” an 11-year peak in its magnetic activity.
I wish you clear skies and big eyes.