For the second night in a row, people around the world were able to see the magnificent aurora borealis light up the sky on Saturday, following a solar storm described as “historic” and expected to continue on Sunday.
This phenomenon is caused by ejections of solar particles which trigger geomagnetic storms upon reaching Planet Earth.
Conditions associated with a level 5 geomagnetic storm, the highest level on the scale used, were observed Friday night and again Saturday morning, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This represents a first in the past twenty years.
Photos of the blue, orange and pink lights around the world flooded social media outlets.
In the United States, the lights were visible across most of the country Friday to Saturday night. They could be seen as far south as the Bahamas, according to NASA. Strong solar storms can “push the aurora to more southern latitudes,” the space agency explained. The Sun is currently near its peak activity, a cycle that repeats itself every 11 years. Solar flares called coronal mass ejections, which can take days to reach Earth, are at the origin of the current event, creating auroras when they come into contact with Earth’s magnetic field.
The last observed level 5 geomagnetic storm occurred in October 2003, an event dubbed “the Halloween storms”. The largest solar storm ever recorded occurred in 1859, according to NASA. Also known as the Carrington event, it seriously disrupted telegraphic communications.
Aurora borealis was visible from Romania, on Friday to Saturday night, at an intensity that has not been documented for hundreds of years, says Dr. Adrian Şonka, astronomer at the Amiral Vasile Urseanu Astronomical Observatory, reports Agerpres.
“When you see the aurora in Romania, it still occurs where it normally occurs, around the magnetic poles, but it rises higher in the atmosphere, is more intense and you can see it at great distances. It’s like when you see the mountains from Bucharest. This does not mean that the mountains are in Bucharest. The mountains are where they are, but the sky is clear and you can see far away. So, the aurora didn’t happen in Romania, but was seen from Romania”, he specified.
The phenomenon was visible to the naked eye and was especially obvious in rural areas not affected by light pollution.
It was seen first in Romania as reddish dots or luminous curtains, towards the north, and lasted for about an hour with interruptions, from 1 AM to circa 2 AM. For this period, the sight was very intense after which the luminous curtains disappeared and left behind and reddish and then greenish background.
