May’s Auroras May Have Been Strongest For 500 Years, Says NASA

sky in the district of Märkisch-Oderland in East Brandenburg. The northern lights are produced by a cloud of electrically charged particles from a solar storm in the earth's atmosphere. Photo: Patrick Pleul/dpa The dazzling display of aurora on May 10/11 was one of the strongest on record in the past 500 years, according to a

In another claim of record-breaking status, the British Geological Survey claimed that the aurora display in the U.K. was the result of the most extreme and long-lasting geomagnetic storm recorded in the last 155 years. “We’ll be studying this event for years,” said Teresa Nieves-Chinchilla, acting director of NASA’s Moon to Mars Space Weather Analysis Office. “It will help us test the limits of our models and understanding of solar storms.” The space agency added that they were"possibly one of the strongest displays of auroras on record in the past 500 years.

Aurora are the result of the solar wind in space—charged particles from the sun—being accelerated down the field lines of the Earth’s magnetic field. Earth's geomagnetic field is compared using readings of its horizontal magnetic field intensity, which in Lerwick in the Sheland Islands, Scotland, typically measure around 30-50 nanoTesla m according to the BGS. On the evening of the 10 May, they peaked at 800 nT.The sunspot that caused the flares and CMEs, called AR13364, is currently facing Venus, which it hurled a huge X12-class solar flare on May 20. That was the most poweful of the current solar cycle.

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