Red Auroras Seen as Far South as Florida in Rare Light Show

The northern lights and their spectacular red glow were seen across the southern U.S. on Friday, being spotted as far down as Florida.

Northern lights, or aurora borealis, of any color are rarely seen so far south, with this occurrence being a result of a severe Category G4 geomagnetic storm in our atmosphere. The storm is a result of a coronal mass ejection—a release of a magnetic field and its plasma—from the sun.

Bill Williams, an astrophotographer, sent his picture of the red aurora taken in Florida to Spaceweather.com, a news website on the Sun-Earth environment. He wrote: "'What in the world happened to our western horizon the night of March 23-24," I queried the astromen of Chiefland Astro Village??!!"

"Normally, we have a very dark western horizon as we are peering over the Suwannee River Basin and the Gulf of Mexico ... We concluded that, because there were no rocket launches or wildfires, it was most likely airglow. The mystery was solved the next day as Spaceweather.com described a 'severe geomagnetic storm' well-seen in the U.S. As far as I know, at 29.4 degrees north latitude, we are the farthest south this aurora has been witnessed and is the first I have seen here in Florida since 2003 and 1989!"

The same geomagnetic storm—said to be the most intense in nearly six years—also resulted in stunning lights across the country on the same night, from Colorado and New Mexico to Canada.

Auroras are caused by solar activity, usually solar flare X-rays or plumes of solar plasma in the form of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) colliding with the Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere.

"Almost all magnetic effects at Earth are due to a combination of the solar wind magnetic field and pressure," Martin Connors, a professor of space science and physics at Athabasca University in Canada, previously told Newsweek. "The solar wind normally flows past at 300 to 700 km/s (that is about a million miles per hour) with up to 10 particles per cubic centimeter (like 10 atoms in the size of a sugar cube: most people call this a 'vacuum'). There is also a very small magnetic field in the solar wind, far smaller than what turns compasses at the surface of Earth."

These solar winds interact with the atoms of gas in our atmosphere, exciting them and causing them to emit light as the aurora, sending waves of color across the night sky.

"The colors in the aurora are the result of particles in the upper atmosphere becoming excited by collisions with particles coming from within the magnetosphere and some from within the solar wind," Brett Carter, an associate professor in space science at RMIT University in Australia, told Newsweek last month. "The different colors are the result of electrons relaxing from different energy levels from oxygen (the most common reds and greens) and nitrogen (dark reds/blues)."

The reactions lower down in the atmosphere create brighter green colors, while higher up, red color is emitted. This is why the further south an observer of the northern lights is, the redder the lights appear, as they are only seeing the top of the aurora.

"That red color is usually also rather faint since you do not have that many of the oxygen atoms around at such high altitudes," Daniel Brown, an associate professor in astronomy and science communication at Nottingham Trent University in the U.K, told Newsweek in February. "But, if you have a strong enough activity like we are getting now, there are enough exciting particles in the coronal mass ejections to interact with more oxygen and make the red brighter."

Stronger geomagnetic storms result in the lights being visible further and further away from the poles, which is what happened on March 23 and 24, leading to the aurora being snapped by Williams all the way in Florida. The southern lights, or aurora australis, were also seen further north than usual in Tasmania in Australia.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Predictions Center, geomagnetic storms can cause a number of other effects on the planet as well as these beautiful displays. Geomagnetic storms are classified on a scale of 1 through 5, with weak G1 storms only leading to minor power grid fluctuations and auroras in the northernmost states. "Extreme" G5 storms, however, can lead to widespread voltage control problems, blackouts in some power grids, and issues with low-frequency radio navigation.

"These storms can influence more than just the power grid infrastructure," Carter said. "The use of GPS can be impacted due to variations in the ionosphere. The orbits of satellites in low-Earth orbit experience increased atmospheric drag due to the swelling of the upper atmosphere."

Luckily, the storm last week was only a G4 storm. G4 storms are expected to occur around 100 times per 11-year solar cycle, with G5 storms only hitting four times per cycle. The current solar cycle, Solar Cycle 25, began at the last solar minimum in December 2019, with the next solar maximum being forecasted for 2025.

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