Intense geomagnetic storms: Auroras seen at lower latitudes across the world • FRANCE 24 English

Intense geomagnetic storms: Auroras seen at lower latitudes across the world • FRANCE 24 English

now for the past three nights a powerful solar storm put on a spectacular Celestial light show around much of the world social media lit up with people posting pictures of the auroras from northern Europe all the way to australasia so to tell us a bit about what that light show actually was is our science editor Julia Seager and Julia look um first of all um those images were spectacular weren’t they uh but before you explain to us what this actually was just tell us did you manage to see them I didn’t I actually missed all of them I was so disappointed uh I tried to find you know a place away from the lights really with a clear view to towards the north but I wasn’t able to see any of them I should have looked longer because so many other people in the northern hemisphere were able to catch that spectacular uh site this what you’re seeing here is actually the M Melle in Normandy it’s a tidle island and the pictures were absolutely stunning but we actually saw also these Northern Lights uh at latitudes as low as Las Vegas in the United United States and there too it was quite spectacular and a lot of pictures were uh were shared on social media with people showing um uh these Northern Lights as you you can see here blue violet uh spectacular indeed uh pictures and uh and it happened for three days in a row which is a lot and it also happened even yesterday in China okay spectacular indeed let’s get into the science then what actually are we looking at so the northern lights are due to as you said the solar storms they’re also called GE Magnetic storms and the ones that we’re experiencing now are quite intense they are level five which is the highest level and the reason why is because the sun has an activity cycle and it Peaks every 11 years and 2024 is actually a peak of solar activity and it’s actually going to reach its greatest Peak this fall um so what what actually H and the reason why we can actually see these Northern Lights at this these low latitudes is because of the intensity of the storms now because usually of course those Northern Lights are usually seen only at the poles the South and the North Pole so what exactly happens um as you know they’re on the surface of the Earth you have these solar storms so these are huge events very powerful events that are going to unleash a lot of gas particles electrons that are then going to of course travel with the solar wind and uh they it can take days to reach Earth and when it does it collides with the Earth’s magnetic field so here in blue and what happens then is that you have energy in the form of light that going to be created and then kind of like a funnel it’s going to fall back along the magnetic the magnetic lines and fall onto uh the poles first on on the side of the earth that is uh with light so uh the daytime and then there’s this Boomerang effect that you can see here and it creates other auroras but this time on the dark side that’s the night side of the earth and this is how we can actually see those aoras uh during the night so this is an animation that you just saw that was created by the University of Oslo and it really does help us to grasp exactly how it works but there’s still so much we don’t actually understand about the Northern Lights do we know how those magnificent colors appear in that way they’re so different right there’s a huge pallet of colors that are possible and what scientists believe is that it’s actually linked to the type of particles that collide with each other so for instance if you have a lot of nitrogen the um nitrogen particles of course the northern lights are going to be more red blue violet if there’s more oxygen it’s more going to be green and red if there’s more hydrogen and helium it’s going to be a mix of violet and blue now once again when I talk about this you may think that the scientific Community knows a lot about the northern lights but actually it’s only since the development just recently of a scientific tools and space exploration that we were able to really measure solar wind particles and I’m saying this but at the same time when you look at what scientists knew in the 17th century they were already quite close to what we Now understand of these Northern Lights wow that’s pretty impressive and just finally Julia you’re talking of course about what we can see from planet Earth um what about extraterrestrial Northern Lights do they exist of course they do because the sun of course uh uh is going to have an impact on all other planets and so we’re going to see those auroras on planets that have a magnetic field and an atmosphere so for instance on Jupiter or on Mars and just recently we were able to capture an aurora on Mars in 2016 with the spacecraft from NASA called Maven and just recently through the emirati mission on Mars and what’s really really cool is that we realize that these um Northern Lights actually happen all over the surface of Mars because it doesn’t have Earth’s magnetic field that works from north to south but it has a magnetic field that touches the entire surface of Mars oh what a spectacular thought would’ love to see that one day chilia sea thanks very much thank you

For the third consecutive night, space enthusiasts from around the world have had the chance to admire magnificent multi-coloured auroras dancing in the skies across the Northern Hemisphere. These northern lights are a result of increased solar activity. FRANCE 24’s Julia Sieger explains.

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