2024 has been a year full of spectacular space shows, some of which can be seen from our backyards.
First was this: total solar eclipse At the beginning of April. Then, late last week, Sun once again became the “star” attraction: A massive sunspot set off a series of solar storms. strengthened the auroramaking this ethereal landscape visible from many parts of the United States, Europe and the world.
Personally, after being completely caught up in emotion Total solar eclipse occurs in DallasI thought this would be the highlight of the year for me in terms of space and science. But the mystical moments of Friday night northern Lights It was so special to be with my mother in my hometown of Cleveland.
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This might not happen for a while, and that evening it all came together by chance. Watching my mother with childlike joy and appreciation for science and space, being stunned and taking photos together – these are the moments I will hold close for the rest of my life. I also shared this experience via text with friends and family across the country, making it difficult to decide which celestial view took the top spot!
If I may catch up with you quickly: I am impressed (no pun intended) by the beauty of Aurora. Seeing the northern lights was on my bucket list and I figured ticking that box would require careful planning and travel to a place where this phenomenon is more common. Instead, it happened in the backyard of where I grew up, with my mom on Mother’s Day weekend; Pretty perfect if I say so myself! We even saw this Big Dipper during the celestial show (and we took a photo of it; thank the incredible technology in our phones)!
“Perfect” is also the word scientists use to describe how everything happened on Friday evening. For the aurora to be so widely visible, there must be a certain level of interaction between the powerful lights. Coronal mass removal (CME) — an explosion that sends out a burst of super-hot plasma from the sun and the Earth’s magnetic field.
“[The aurora] It was one of those rare moments when you can be at one with Mother Earth, with the universe; It was pretty perfect. When there is a perfect match, the negative ends meet the positive ends, which brings all the energy; That’s what we want,” Bill Murtagh, program coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), he told Space.com over the phone.
“Friday was absolutely spectacular, with the aurora borealis visible as far as the Florida Keys, Puerto Rico and Mexico,” Murtagh added.
The number of CMEs responsible for this historic event is impressive; each moving at different speeds and trajectories. For a geomagnetic storm to reach its strongest level (G5 on the SWPC scale), CMEs must either merge or approach Earth at or near the same time.
“What complicates matters is that some of the faster ones catch up with the slower ones, and this tends to make the situation worse, presenting a more complex scenario that results in a greater response,” Murtagh said. said. “And after the first CME arrives, when the current storm is this intense it is difficult to discern the characteristics of other CMEs that may follow it. Sometimes you see the term cannibalization; one CME cannibalizes another, and then another. That’s what happens in this case.”
Friday’s event was the first extreme geomagnetic storm since 2003, according to SWPC. This was the last time we had a G5 level geomagnetic storm; It occurred in late October of that year and caused quite a stir. The spooky event leading up to Halloween. Worst-case scenarios are almost always associated with more than one CME, Murtagh said. The Carrington Event of 1859 and then New York Railroad Superstorm of 1921.
But before we see the glow of auroras in the evening sky and the formation of geomagnetic storms resulting from intense CMEs, we must go back to the source: the large and magnetically complex Sun spot Clusters on the solar surface. Scientists say clusters this large aren’t that unusual, but producing so many CMEs leads to the G5 geomagnetic storm — which usually only happens a few times every 11-year solar cycle.
“We have not experienced any G5 storms in the last 11-year cycle. When a sunspot group forms, it is usually one to three times the size of the Earth. The magnetic complexity can produce a small flare, but not much. This continues to grow until it becomes the giant it is now.” It was an ongoing sunspot, 15 times its size. Soil“It’s so complex that it’s broken out multiple times in the last week,” Murtagh said.
One full rotation of the Sun takes 27 days. As we approach the end of the first half of this week, the sunspot cluster will disappear. But until then, powerful solar flares and more CMEs towards Earth are still a possibility.
While the geomagnetic storm may have given us a great skygazing weekend, there’s another side to the coin: potential negative impacts on technology, including power grids, GPS, and satellites. there so far There are reports of some effectsIncluding irregularities in power grids and disruptions to high-frequency communications, GPS and potentially satellite navigation. But we’ve had much more disruptive solar events in the past.
One example was the X4 class solar flare in March 1989 Accompanied by a CME interacting stronger than expected with the Earth’s magnetic field, it led to grid collapse in Quebec and significant impacts on the US grid from the Carolinas to California. Events like this remind us of the importance of paying attention to space weather forecasts, just as we do when it comes to severe weather on Earth. This allows us to prepare for the worst-case scenario when it comes to that point, as scientists still face many limitations when it comes to the final part of an Earth-bound CME’s journey towards our planet.
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“It’s a bad day when we get one of the CMEs, and it’s coming in much stronger than expected. I don’t know about it until the last minute when it hits the L1 spacecraft, and now I have 15 minutes before it hits Earth orbit. Murtagh said there wasn’t much lead time because of the magnetic field.” . (L1 is the Earth-sun Lagrange Point 1, a gravitationally stable point in space about 1 million miles, or 1.6 million kilometers, from our planet in the direction of the sun. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory spacecraft, NASA and the European Space AgencyIt is stationed in L1.)
“It’s almost like telling someone we’re expecting a Category 2 hurricane and then giving them a 15-minute wait when it’s actually a Cat 5. That’s our fear,” Murtagh said. “If we can produce a good forecast, can they take mitigation measures in preparation and predict what’s going to happen? Nothing. And that’s the goal; just beautiful lights and no loss or damage to infrastructure. So far so good.”
Editor’s Note: If you take a stunning photo or video of the northern lights (or southern lights!) and want to share them with Space.com for a possible story, submit images, comments on the view and your location, and also use the permissions. spacephotos@space.com.