The northern lights add an eerie glow to Halloween after massive solar flare | science and technology news

A solar flare hit Earth on Halloween, giving astronomers a strange sight of the northern lights.

When the star’s charged particles collided with the planet’s magnetosphere, it created beautiful, frightening green and orange auroras.

Astronomers, photographers and enthusiasts have captured dozens of photos and videos from the show and shared them on social media, including footage from Northumberland, England.

Andrew Douglas, who often posts pictures of Farne Island off the northeastern coast of England, captured images of the aurora borealis dancing near the horizon.

The rash – officially known as coronal mass ejection (CME) – left the sun on Thursday and occurs as we enter period of increased solar activity.

Despite being an X1 – the most powerful of all – the CME was “much slower and more awake than expected” according to the UK Met Office.

Michael Charnik, an American meteorologist visiting Iceland, snapped a Halloween photo using only his iPhone 13.

Some fear that some of the flares are so powerful that they interrupt electronic systems on Earth’s surface.

Recently, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued an alert warning that a geomagnetic storm could cause fluctuations in the power grid with voltage alerts at higher latitudes, where the Earth is most exposed.

Thomas Klein, a freelance journalist who is currently trying to build a log cabin in Swedish Lapland, has shared several other photos of the lights appearing just above his head.

NOAA added that satellites could also be affected and could have “orientation irregularities,” meaning that ground control would have to reorient them, along with anything in low Earth orbit that experiences increased drag.

Comedian Paul Black, who recently performed at the Edinburgh Fringe, took four photos using the iPhone 12 Pro’s time-lapse feature.

Only NOAA’s geomagnetic storm that issued the warning is expected to reach category G2, which is fairly strong according to the agency.

In the end, the Class X1 storm and eruption did not cause a major disturbance, but that disturbance did in the past.

Space weather experts point to the Carrington event, considered the largest solar storm on record, which hit Earth in 1859.

The Carrington event left visible auroras in the sky, even at latitudes much closer to the equator, and they have been described in contemporary reports as brighter than the light of a full moon.

It has caused telegraph systems to fail across Europe and North America, and a similar storm today could cause billions of dollars in damage worldwide.

It has been observed that solar activity naturally increases and decreases every 11 years, but not quite like clockwork, and astronomers believe we are now in the early years of a new busy period.

A new family of sunspots, discovered on the surface of our star last year, Caused the biggest solar flare Watched by scientists since 2017.