May 10, 2024, Brandenburg, Valkenhagen: A light green and slightly reddish aurora glows at night … [+]
The dazzling display of the aurora borealis on May 10 and 11 was one of the most powerful recorded in the past 500 years, according to a report published by the British newspaper “Daily Mail”. statement From NASA.
In another record-breaking claim, the British Geological Survey claimed that the UK’s aurora display was the result of the most extreme and longest-lasting geomagnetic storm recorded in the past 155 years.
There is a possibility that it is about to happen again.
“We will be studying this event for years,” said Teresa Nieves Chinchilla, acting director of NASA’s Space Weather Analysis Office. “It will help us test the limits of our models and understand solar storms.” The space agency added that it was “perhaps one of the most powerful aurora displays recorded in the past 500 years.”
Simultaneous strikes
It caused a solar storm on May 10/11 Northern lights (Northern Lights) can be seen as far south as Florida in the Northern Hemisphere, while the Northern Lights Aurora Australia (Southern Lights) appeared as far north as New Zealand.
NASA first detected the beginnings of a solar storm on May 7, when two solar flares were found. An astonishing seven satellites lifted off over the next four days, all aiming to hurl coronal mass ejections — clouds of charged particles — toward Earth. They traveled at different speeds and arrived at the same time.
“All the coronal emissions arrived at once, and the conditions were just right to create a truly historic storm,” said Elizabeth MacDonald, NASA’s heliophysics chief and a space scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The largest since 2003
According to the BGS, May’s geomagnetic storm — caused by a series of successive solar flares and the subsequent coronal emission — shares characteristics with a few of the largest storms since 1869, most recently the 2003 Halloween geomagnetic storm. It added that the activity was recorded Daily geomagnetic since 1869.
The aurora is the result of space’s solar wind – charged particles from the Sun – being accelerated across the field lines of the Earth’s magnetic field.
The Earth’s geomagnetic field is compared using horizontal magnetic field strength readings, which at Lerwick in the Sheland Islands, Scotland, typically measure around 30-50 nanotesla (nT) m according to the BGS. On the evening of May 10, it peaked at 800 Newtons.
Aurora’s return?
The sunspot that caused the flares and coronal ejection, called AR13364, is currently facing Venus, having unleashed a massive X12 solar flare on May 20. It was the strongest in the current solar cycle. As the Sun orbits toward Earth, AR13364 is expected to remain active, raising warnings of the potential for more geomagnetic storms.
New article published in nature It states that more powerful geomagnetic storms are expected in the next year or two, as the Sun heads toward “solar maximum,” a once-every-11-year peak in its magnetic activity.
I wish you clear skies and wide eyes.
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