Rare aurorae on the Sun: a powerful solar storm opened a “highway” with the movement of charged particles - NASA
Kyiv • UNN
The intense solar storm created a “highway” of charged particles between the Earth and the Sun. This caused rare auroras on the Sun and lit up the skies in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.
A “highway” was created between the Earth and the Sun with the movement of charged particles that lit up the sky in the southern United States, Arizona and Arkansas, as well as in Australia and New Zealand. The anomaly could be recognized as a “light show,” but with the help of powerful observation devices, according to the publication Space.com and NASA Sun & Space reports UNN.
Details
An intense solar storm is opening a “two-way highway” for charged particles, causing rare auroras on the Sun, writes a portal about space exploration, innovation and astronomy.
The authors of the article recalled the events of April 2023:
A wave of charged particles escaped from the Sun and lit up the sky south of Arizona and Arkansas, as well as parts of Australia and New Zealand. In an unusual way, these particles opened a “two-way highway” that flew from the Earth to the Sun and provoked a solar light show. It should be noted that compared to the brightness of the Sun, these auroras were probably too faint to be seen.
An interesting fact of observation:
The “highway” was created mainly due to a plasma-rich component of the solar wind called a coronal mass ejection (CME), which typically travels faster than the speed at which magnetic waves known as Alvena waves travel through the plasma.
But sometimes a situation arises when low-density plasma emitted by the Sun due to coronal mass ejections can lead to a situation where the Alfvén speed exceeds the solar wind speed. In such circumstances, the Earth's magnetosphere changes its shape and begins to resemble something like wings.
During the April solar eruption, NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft recorded that, thanks to Alfvén's “wings,” our planet was magnetically connected to a part of the Sun that had recently erupted.
The spacecraft's instruments recorded plasma erupting from our planet to the Sun for about two hours.
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The wings are named after the Swedish physicist and Nobel laureate Hannes Alfvén, who theorized the behavior of the aurorae and described them as arising from the entry of charged particles from the Sun into the Earth's atmosphere through its magnetic field lines. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1970 for his work on the nature of electromagnetic waves traveling in charged gas.
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