The Earth was hit by the biggest geomagnetic storm in at least five years, causing the sky to glow green and purple with aurora.
According to experts, the solar storm generated “a major disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field,” which is likely to have disrupted infrastructure and made the northern lights visible to the human eye.
On Saturday (March 23), NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center issued a geomagnetic storm watch after detecting a coronal mass ejection.
A massive cloud of magnetic and plasma field bursts from the sun’s corona causing coronal mass ejections, also known as CMEs.
Northern Lights shine across the sky and shimmer over the volcano in Iceland
After the solar storm struck planet Earth, it created beautiful green, purple, and red auroras for skywatchers across the skies in Europe, New Zealand, and parts of the northern United States.
The auroras, commonly known as the northern and southern lights, were caused by the solar storm. However, they swiftly dissipated as geomagnetic activity decreased.
According to “aurora hunter” Alexander Kuznetsov of Finland, the “aurora did one amazing dance just after the fall of darkness” on SpaceWeather.com.
He said, “It started as a sharp dancing arc in the Southern horizon, and it quickly went overhead, producing some of the most vibrant red & purple auroras that I’ve seen in my entire aurora hunting career!”
Meanwhile, Matti Helin, an aurora observer from southwest Finland, said that a “nice display” lasted only 20 minutes.
This natural occurrence was also photographed in the skies above a volcano in the Icelandic town of Grindavik, which erupted as the Northern Lights blazed over the night sky.
Auroras are formed when the sun sends several solar particles towards Earth, disrupting the magnetic field and causing a geomagnetic storm.
