Cosmic show lights up skies

Coronal mass ejections from the sun started on Friday. POWERFUL SOLAR STORM CAUSES SPECTACULAR CELESTIAL DISPLAYS

Auroras lit up skies across swaths of the planet for the second night in a row on Saturday after already dazzling people from the United States to Tasmania to the Bahamas the day before.

A powerful solar storm has triggered spectacular celestial shows usually confined to the far northern reaches of the planet, hence their nickname of the “northern lights”.

“I have the sensation of living through a historic night in France... It was really charged, with solar particles and emotions,” said Eric Lagadec, an astrophysicist at the Observatoire de Cote d’Azur.

“Find good spots, away from the lights, with a clear view to the north,” he advised.

Late on Saturday evening, pictures again started trickling onto social media as people in the US reported sightings, although not as strong as Friday night’s.

The first of several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – expulsions of plasma and magnetic fields from the sun – came just after Friday afternoon, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Weather Prediction Centre. It was later upgraded to an “extreme” geomagnetic storm – the first since the “Halloween Storms” of October 2003 that caused blackouts in Sweden and damaged power infrastructure in South Africa. Friday’s storm was listed as hitting level five geomagnetic conditions – the highest on the scale. Saturday saw G3 to G5 conditions with G3 conditions possible into today.

But no major disruptions to power or communications networks appear to have been reported this time around despite initial worries from authorities.

There have only been “preliminary reports of power grid irregularities, degradation to high-frequency communications, GPS and possibly satellite navigation”, said the centre.

Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet operator has 5 000 satellites in low Earth orbit. He said his satellites were “under a lot of pressure, but holding up so far”.

China’s National Centre for Space Weather issued a “red alert” on Saturday morning, warning the storm would affect communications and navigation in most areas of the country. Media reports said auroras were visible in the northern half of the country.

Excitement over the natural phenomenon has popped up across the world. –

Picture: AFP LET IT GLOW. Northern lights illuminate the night sky in Novosibirsk, Russia, yesterday. Excitement has greeted the phenomenon because the light displays are usually seen in the far north areas of Earth.