Many travel far north just to get a glimpse of the aurora borealis; however, recently the amazing spectacle was visible across the U.S skies. This phenomenon was caused by coronal mass ejections from the sun, triggering the first severe geomagnetic storm in 20 years. As a result, the northern lights became visible across the night sky as far south as parts of Arizona.
Many Arizonans attempted to photograph the event, but in many cases it wasn’t easily visible to the naked eye, especially in Phoenix. Due to how far south Arizona is the aurora was already hard to see, but Phoenix’s light pollution made it nearly impossible. Traveling to northern Arizona away from big cities was a necessity to see this event without telescopes.
According to the Space Weather Prediction Center, during solar storms, the sun ejects large amounts of solar material, which can cause geomagnetic storms. When the charged particles sent from the sun’s solar flares come into contact with earth’s atmospheric particles, they collide; Royal Museums Greenwich states that this creates an aurora. Different elements make different colors when they come into contact with the solar particles, with the atmosphere consisting of mostly nitrogen and oxygen, the vibrant green is caused by the oxygen in the atmosphere, while the nitrogen causes the rest of the colors, including purple, blue and pink.
KSL News Radio says that these storms mess with radio systems because when the radiation from coronal mass ejections hits Earth, it affects the ionosphere, which reflects and modifies radio waves used for communication and navigation. The disruption to the ionosphere causes satellites, and other spacecraft, to dislocate, possibly even knocking out their electronics. Furthermore, these interruptions can block radio waves from getting to satellites. Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) heavily depend on signals through the ionosphere; without them, GPS may have difficulty functioning.
The aurora borealis being visible in the sky is an amazing view. Although this solar event is not common to happen in the south, it was lucky to occur in the U.S.
