I wanted to share these photos of the view from our house at the northern edge of the Indianapolis suburbs. These are from an iPhone on 3 second exposure and are pretty close to what we could see with the naked eye. Some looked more intense by maybe 25% but others didn’t capture the full effect as we were seeing the actual “waving ribbons” effect that couldn’t be captured in a photo.
My question is how rare is it for the lights to be this visible this far south? I’m 37 and have never seen anything close to this. In past event I’ve seen the sky have a slight green tinge to it, but that’s it. When is the last time the US has seen them this vibrant and widespread?
by strangemedia6
2 Comments
I’m not an astronomer so take my opinion with a grain of salt but I don’t think it’s common but also not super rare. The sun goes through cycles of activity every 7 years or something like that and we’re currently in its most active period. We have been lucky enough to be in the path of some big flares recently so Auroras have been appearing farther south more frequently.
It’s fairly rare, they’re happening now because we got hit by three very powerful solar flares (technically Coronal Mass Ejections, the blast of gas that’s thrown off of the Sun’s surface when a solar flare happens) all at the same time, so they’ve massively amped up the aurora. The strongest one has actually managed to punch all the way through the magnetic field and atmosphere and can be detected by instruments on the ground.
The last time there was a big aurora causing flare, it was May 2024, so they aren’t ultra-mega-rare or anything. The last time a flare powerful enough to hit the ground happened, it was 2006, so those are roughly once in 20 years.
These ones aren’t that dangerous, the geomagnetic storm is rated G4, so it can affect satellites and GPS guidance, and it might cause power grid protection measures to mistakenly go off, so there’s a chance of blackouts. Obviously you’re screwed if that happens while you’re having open-heart surgery or trying not to drive off of a cliff or something, but by and large they’re not going to do anything serious.