Thanks to a massive flare and explosion on the Sun that spewed material toward Earth, millions of people were treated recently to displays of red, green and pink lights in the sky.
Dazzling aurora borealis displays like this usually are visible only in far northern and southern parts of the globe. But overnight on Oct. 10 and 11, they lit up the skies as far south as Texas. It was all the result of a severe geomagnetic storm triggered by a coronal mass ejection that had occurred together with an intense solar flare on October 8, 2024.
"The Sun goes burp and the atmosphere turns red," was how NASA astronaut Don Pettit put it recently on X, the social media platform. "Spectacular not only from Earth but from orbit as well."
Given the photo he shot from the International Space Station (the one at the top of this post), that seems like an understatement. I don't know about you, but I find it mind blowing. In the photo, parts of the station are visible along with a psychedelic red and green glow beyond and the Earth below.
"It looked like @Space_Station had been shrunk to some miniature dimension and inserted into a neon sign," Pettit wrote. "We were not flying above the aurora; we were flying in the aurora. And it was blood red."
His crewmate, Matthew Dominick took this equally compelling photo of the aurora on Oct. 7, 2024:
Solar activity, which occurs in a natural 11-year cycle, has been steadily ramping up, triggering repeated auroral episodes farther from the poles than usual. Last May, for example, a fusillade of solar flares and coronal mass ejections propelled charged particles and magnetic energy toward Earth. The resulting geomagnetic storm was the strongest in 20 years, and it produced some of the most vigorous auroral displays seen in the past 500 years.
With nighttime skies lighting up so dramatically, and so distant from the polar regions, it probably should come as no surprise that scientists think we've reached a period of maximum solar activity. This could continue throughout the next year.
So if you haven't yet gotten a chance to witness the northern lights, new opportunities may be coming your way soon — even if you live as far south as Texas.
