The northern lights have been seen as far south as Florida in the United States after a powerful geomagnetic storm hit the planet.
Rare images of colorful events. generally A G4 solar storm, visible in northern regions 2,400 kilometers from the North Pole, flooded social media on Thursday evening.
“Everyone get out, even Florida!!” Photographer and storm chaser Mike Theiss wrote On X, formerly Twitter. “Intense northern lights are occurring right now. Find a dark spot and look north.”
“Levels are now approaching G5 solar storm conditions, higher than what we saw in the May aurora.” Explained Jamie Arnold is a meteorologist for WMBF, an NBC affiliate in South Carolina. “The show could be even better tonight. “The Northern Lights can be heard from South Florida.”
Meteorologist Shea Gibson together ga Good morning Connecticut and co-host Laura Hutchinson marveled at the “beautiful show.” I exchange three paintings.
Several National Weather Service (NWS)
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center released its forecast for a “severe” G4 geomagnetic storm on Wednesday, predicting the northern lights would be “from southern Alabama to northern California.”
news week reached the Space Weather Prediction Center for comment via email Thursday evening.
According to the Space Weather Prediction Center, the aurora borealis and aurora australis, or southern lights, “are the result of electrons colliding with Earth’s upper atmosphere.”
“The accelerated electrons follow the Earth’s magnetic field to the polar regions, where they collide with oxygen and nitrogen atoms and molecules in the Earth’s upper atmosphere,” the center states. countries website. “In these collisions, electrons transfer their energy to the atmosphere, exciting atoms and molecules to higher energy states.”
“When they return to their lower energy state, they release their energy in the form of light,” he continues. “It’s how neon lights work. An aurora usually forms. [31 to 310 miles] From the surface of the earth.”
Depending on the height, different colors of light are seen. Oxygen produces a green color at lower altitudes, red light at higher altitudes, and nitrogen a violet-blue color. The northern lights seen in the south appear mostly red because observers can only see the lights at high altitudes.
In addition to the visual spectacle of auroras, powerful geomagnetic storms can also threaten electrical infrastructure and communications networks, a major concern in the United States this week as several states recover from the devastation caused by hurricanes Helena and Milton.
This was reported by Peter Gallagher, director of the Dunsink Observatory, head of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Dublin. news week a solar storm could disrupt “communications networks used by emergency services.”
At the time of this publication, there were no reports of the geomagnetic storm causing significant disruptions to communications networks.