A coronal dawn appears over southwestern British Columbia on May 10 , 2024.NASA / Mara Johnson - Groh
This calendar week has seen one of the most dramatic solar storm in decades , leading toviews of break of day seen around the worldas charged particles from the Sunday interacted with Earth ’s atmosphere . But the event were n’t only notable for the gorgeous colour catch in the sky — they are also a means for scientists to acquire about the Sunday and how its activity alter over time .
scientist have a go at it that the sun operates on a about 11 - year cycles/second of increasing and decreasing activity . We are presently heading toward solar uttermost , when the sun ’s activity prime , but even so the solar storm observed recently were far more powerful than is distinctive for this point of the cycle . That give NASA scientists an chance for garner valuable data .
A coronal aurora appears over southwestern British Columbia on May 10, 2024.NASA/Mara Johnson-Groh
“ We ’ll be hit the books this event for years , ” say Teresa Nieves - Chinchilla , acting theater director of NASA ’s Moon to Mars ( M2 M ) Space Weather Analysis Office , in astatement . “ It will serve us try out the limits of our models and reason of solar tempest . ”
The period of solar storm began May 7 , with a bombardment of solar flares and blowup of vigor called coronal mass ejections occurring over the follow several days . This culminate with the most powerful solar flare seen in the current cycle on May 14 . It take some clip for the result to travel from the sun to Earth , so the geomagnetic storms here begin on May 10 and lasted across the weekend .
It was this solar tempest that created the widely fancy sunup , and many amateur stargazer and even regular people without any particular astronomic cognition were able to capture beautiful images because of grow camera technology .
“ photographic camera — even stock cell phone cameras — are much more sensitive to the color of the aurora than they were in the yesteryear , ” said Elizabeth MacDonald , NASA heliophysics citizen science lead . “ By collecting photos from around the world , we have a Brobdingnagian chance to learn more about dawn through citizen science . ”
There is n’t a simple way to measure the military posture of a geomagnetic storm , but this one was given the gamy rating of G5 , which has n’t been used since 2003 . One thing that was particularly notable about this geomagnetic storm was how far south of the North Pole the dayspring were visible , as they are typically only seen around glacial regions .
McDonald is ask the great unwashed to take reports of what they did see — or even if they did n’t see an aurora at all in their region — toAurorasaurus.orgto aid with skill enquiry .
And while the sunshine ’s tempestuous natural action will carry on , the region where most of the activity was coming from is now present away from Earth , so we should n’t experience more auroras than common here . However , scientist are interested to see the view from Mars , which is currently place ahead of Earth and so will get a continue opinion of the solar activity for another day .
