NEW ZEALAND: The southern lights appeared in cities that would not often be able to see them, delighting Aurora hunters across New Zealand as a result of a “solar tsunami” of activity in space.
Photographs of purple, orange, and green lights were shared on social media on Monday night. The Aurora Australis was visible in cities with high levels of solar storm activity, far farther north than it is usually visible.
Devlin Lynden, project manager of the University of Otago’s Solar Tsunami project, reported that the “solar tsunami” that sparked auroras in the night sky had reached levels not seen in New Zealand since 2017.
The Solar Tsunami project measures the varying “nanoteslas,” a unit of change in the magnetic field. On Monday night, they detected variations in the regime of 600 nanoteslas, the largest seen since September 2017.
The aurora borealis was observed in Ireland, portions of the UK, and up to 30 US states on Sunday night as a result of the same solar conditions that caused extraordinary auroras in the southern hemisphere.
Tourists in New Zealand were delighted by the aurora, many of whom had never seen it before. Chris Lierhiemer, a photographer, said it was his first time seeing an aurora.
Solar flares or solar storms on the surface of the sun can cause disturbances like auroras. The most recent ones happened after the sun released a significant amount of energy on Friday. The magnetic field of the Earth can be violently pulled out of shape and then snapped back into place by violent solar disturbances. Electrons can ride these waves, smashing with one another to produce washes of light and colour in the sky. These waves are caused by variations in the Earth’s magnetic field.
According to Lynden, “These kinds of events are centred at the poles of [Earth], so if there are going to be events at one pole, there are definitely going to be events at the other pole.”
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