Earth in Solar Flare ‘Crosshairs’ After Auroras Lit Up U.S. Skies
Our planet might be hit by another massive solar flare Monday, following multiple northern lights sightings across the U.S. on Sunday night.
There is a 30 percent chance of an X-class solar flare hitting us on October 7, and a 75 percent chance of an M-class flare being seen, due to the Earth being in the "crosshairs" of six volatile sunspots on the sun's surface.
This comes as 14 U.S. states caught a glimpse of the northern lights on Sunday night, thanks to a G1 to G2-strength geomagnetic storm.
That included views for people across Massachusetts, North and South Dakota, Illinois, Missouri, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Kansas, Virginia, Minnesota, Idaho, New York, California, and North Carolina, according to spaceweather.com.
Nature photographer Peter Forister snapped a spectacular shot of the rosy-red aurora over the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia.
This storm was the result of a coronal mass ejection (CME) flung out from the sun at the same time as an X9.0 solar flare, the most powerful solar flare of the solar cycle so far .
CMEs are huge plumes of solar plasma spat out from magnetically unstable areas of the sun's surface, usually sunspots. They often accompany solar flares, which are flashes of X-ray and ultraviolet radiation. While solar flares arrive at the Earth within 8 minutes of eruption-since they travel at the speed of light-CMEs take a few days, traveling through space at millions of miles per hour.
When CMEs hit our planet's magnetic field, the two may interact with each other in a way that triggers a geomagnetic storm, resulting in the solar plasma being funneled along Earth's magnetic field lines into the atmosphere. There, the plasma reacts with the gases in our atmosphere, sparking the bright colors known as the aurora.
"CMEs that are traveling quickly and have southward magnetic fields are most likely to cause large geomagnetic storms, but it is currently very difficult to estimate the internal magnetic field of a CME. This is an area of active research, that many scientists are working on," Peter Gallagher, head of astronomy and astrophysics and director of the Dunsink Observatory at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, told Newsweek.
Geomagnetic storms are classified on a scale of G1 (minor) to G5 (extreme) , with the most powerful G5 storms being the most rare. More powerful storms result in the northern lights being seen further south than usual.
The geomagnetic storm that sparked the auroras across the U.S. last night was weaker than anticipated: F orecasts predicted a G3 storm , but only G1/G2 conditions were recorded. This is because of the direction of the magnetic field of the CME, which didn't coordinate with our planet's magnetic field in a way that led to more intense geomagnetic storming.
"The magnetic field is pointing primarily in the wrong direction for decent storming. If the #solarstorm hitting now were upside down so that the magnetic field signature were reversed, we would likely be having a G2-level storm right now," space weather physicist Tamitha Skov explained in a post to X, formerly Twitter .
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This story was originally published October 7, 2024, 10:40 AM.
