The sun has been going through solar cycles for 4.6 billion years, but in May, millions of humans were able to experience an intense burst of solar activity.
The sun has been going through solar cycles for 4.6 billion years, but in May, millions of humans were able to experience an intense burst of solar activity in a way that we've never collectively been able to do before: through our cell phones.
During this transition, the massive star's magnetic field becomes more disconnected and disjointed, resulting in an increase of sunspots, solar prominences and solar flares. The sunspot producing the solar flare that created the spectacular aurora display in early May. A prominent sun spot region now designated as AR3697, detected in early May, produced around 50 M class and X class flares and more than half a dozen CME's. The excitement among scientists, astronomers and aurora chasers was palpable in the days leading up to the May 10to 11 geomagnetic storm.
With a G5/Kp 9 rating, when the May storm arrived in earth's atmosphere, it created an aurora event so vibrant and widespread it was seen as far south as Mexico. "It was one of the most magical ejections from the sun that came straight toward the earth," said Langill."Huge aurora for many, many days."The primary communication system was telegraph at the time and the wires were the perfect antennas to pick up the charged solar particles that had flooded into earth's atmosphere."The worry is if one of those happened today it could cause large scale blackouts that would take a long time to recover from.
This storm took place in solar cycle 22, and is believed to have been produced by a strong X 15-class solar flare on March 6, followed by two CME's a few days later. "This G5 event was relatively uneventful for the planet, and if we compare it to what we saw in 2003," said RatzlaffThere was some disturbance detected from the May event. In the precision agriculture sector, companies like John Deere also reported problems with their GPS systems.The active sunspot 3697 emerging from the far side of the sun.
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