AURORAS IN COLORADO THIS MORNING: A late-arriving CME hit Earth's magnetic field on May 16th (0620 UT), sparking a moderate G2-class geomagnetic field. Aaron Watson witnessed the red afterglow of the CME's impact from Colorado! The storm subsided a few hours after it began, and is over now. Aurora alerts: SMS Text
RARE SOUTH PACIFIC AURORAS CONFIRM 'GREAT STORM': On the south Pacific island of New Caledonia, no one expects to see auroras. Ever. Situated about halfway between Tonga and Australia, the cigar-shaped island is too close to the equator for Northern or Southern Lights. Yet on May 10, 2024, this happened:
"I have rarely been so happy when taking a photo!" says Frédéric Desmoulins, who photographed the display from Boulouparis in the island's south province. "I could see the red color of the auroras with my naked eye. According to the New Caledonian Astronomy Society, these photos are the first for this territory."
"The auroral visibility from New Caledonia is really unique and extremely valuable," says Hisashi Hayakawa, a space weather researcher at Japan's Nagoya University. "The last time sky watchers saw auroras in the area may have been during the Carrington Event of Sept. 1859, when auroras were sighted from a ship in the Coral Sea."
Hayakawa specializes in historical studies of great auroral storms. He tries to go back in time as far as possible. The problem is, magnetometers and other modern sensors didn't exist hundreds of years ago. Instead, he looks for records of aurora sightings in old newspapers, diaries, ships logs and even paintings. Great Storms are identified by their low latitude--anything with naked-eye auroras below 30° MLAT (magnetic latitude).
"May 10th was definitely a 'Great Storm,'" declares Hayakawa. "Naked-eye auroras in New Caledonia (MLAT = -26.4°) and Puerto Rico (MLAT = 27.2°) cracked the latitude barrier in both of Earth's hemispheres."
In fact, it is among the top 20 Great Storms of the past 500 years. The above timeline from a research paper by Hayakawa has been modified to display the May 10th event. It is the green dot on the far-right end of the timeline.
Hayakawa is eager for more data. Readers, if you witnessed auroras at low latitudes on May 10th, please submit your photos to our gallery and fill out this questionnaire from Hayakawa. Your observations may be included in a future research paper.
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MONSTER SUNSPOT TARGETS MARS: First Earth, now Mars. Carrington-class sunspot AR3664 is now directly facing the Red Planet. NASA's Mars rover Perseverance saw it yesterday through the dusty air of Jezero Crater:
On May 14th, AR3664 produced an X8.6-class solar flare, the strongest flare of the solar cycle, and hurled a corresponding CME directly toward Mars. NASA models suggest it should hit Mars on May 17th, potentially sparking global auroras.
"We're bracing for impact!" says says Nick Schneider of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). Schneider works with an ultraviolet camera on NASA's MAVEN spacecraft, which may be able to observe the display. Stay tuned!
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18K GOLD TOTAL ECLIPSE PENDANT: This pendant has touched the shadow of the Moon. On April 8, 2024, during a total eclipse of the sun in Texas, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched it to the stratosphere onboard a cosmic ray research balloon. Floating more than 118,110 feet high, the locket spent 3 minutes and 45 seconds wrapped in lunar shadow:
You can have it for $199.95. The 18K gold-plated locket is inscribed with the words "I love you to the Moon and back," and opens to hold a personal photo or other small item. It comes with a greeting card showing the locket in flight and telling the story of its journey to the edge of space during the total eclipse.
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