On May 10, the northern lights illuminated skies as far south as the U.S. Gulf Coast. It was an unprecedented display, as the northern lights usually only show themselves in areas with low light pollution at high latitudes. This incredible phenomenon occurred due to a potent solar storm that swept across Earth, as stated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center issued a severe geomagnetic storm watch on May 10, alerting a large swath of the U.S. to the possibility of witnessing the aurora borealis. Fueling this storm was a massive sunspot cluster, which unleashed several coronal mass ejections – powerful bursts of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun’s outer atmosphere. While such events do not directly harm humans, they can affect radio communications, power grids, and GPS systems. The last time this type of geomagnetic event occurred, there were power outages in Sweden.

The solar storm and its effects continued into the weekend, to May 12. According to the NOAA, the best time to catch sight of this phenomenon was within an hour or two of midnight. Moreover, the cell phone camera would have been able to better capture it than the naked eye.

Hannah Kim
For The Teen Times
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