Celebration of a Killing Sun

NASA scientists have not yet forgotten the nasty surprise that the Sun had in store for us 5 years ago during this time of the year. As we’re passing this half-decade milestone, they recall how one of the most atrocious solar storms ever recorded – and definitely the most powerful one of modern times – affected Earth and the human-built spacecraft, while causing auroras to be seen far to the south, even in Florida.

 

Usually, during this period of the year, the Sun is just past a low point in activity in relation to its 11-year cycle. It's normally a time of tranquility, when the sun wind and the sunspots are barely noticed (as happened this year). However, in 2003, our star surprised everyone when 17 enormous flares erupted all of a sudden, wreaking havoc throughout the system. They determined the elongation and eventually the snapping of the lines of Sun’s magnetic field, like an elastic band stretched too much.

 

This stirred large coronal mass ejections – giant blasts on the surface of the Sun, sending billions of tons of subatomic particles and charged gas into the outer space at incredible speeds (nearly 14,000 miles per second or 22,000 km per second). Everything in the solar system was affected by the huge explosions to some extent, but most noticeably the cosmic bodies closer to the Sun. Of course, Earth had its own share – and quite a share that was.

 

In the aftermath of this event, the “space weather” continuously smashed against our planet's magnetic field for almost 3 weeks, from October 19th to November 7th. “The effects of these storms were ghoulish enough that [aircraft controllers] had to re-route aircraft, it affected satellite systems and communications, and it also caused a power outage in Sweden for about an hour,” shared Dr. Holly Gilbert, a solar scientist from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

 

As a result of the Sun's abnormal activity, most of the spacecraft sent by humans into space, from the near-Earth ones to those found in deep space, felt the impact of the Halloween storms of 2003, while the activity of polar aurora, at Earth's both north and south poles, increased. “The aurora are normally limited to the higher latitudes, and these storms were so powerful they created aurora that could be seen as far south as Florida,” explained Gilbert. Future missions aimed at observing the Sun and its activity in more detail could offer warning on such events happening, as well as provide a deeper knowledge on the reasons why they occur.