Over the weekend, skies across the US, UK and New Zealand lit up with auroras and northern lights due to the strongest solar storm in two decades. This rare phenomena also made its way to India where a stable red arc event was seen from Hanle, Ladakh and captured on cameras at the Dark Sky Reserve.
As social media flooded with pictures from skies from Austria, Germany, Slovakia, Switzerland, Denmark, Poland, the US and the UK, sky watchers from Ladakh also shared their images of the glimmering skies.
The Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA Bengaluru) also shared a timelapse of the aurora in Ladakh. A faint red glow was visible across the horizon from the Hanle Dark Sky Reserve from 1 AM to 3:30 AM on Saturday (May 11).
"We were fortunate to witness Aurora activities on our all-sky camera during regular telescope observations," Stanzin Norla, an engineer at the Hanle Dark Sky Reserve, told news agency PTI.
The image of the Ladakh aurora was also captured by a DLSR camera stationed at the Dark Sky Reserve and soon went viral across Indian social media platforms.
"Auroras seen near the north or south poles are dynamic events. They keep changing. But the one witnessed at Ladakh was more stable. It is called the stable auroral red arc. The steady glow remained in the sky for a couple of hours," Dorje Angchuk, an engineer at the Indian Astronomical Observatory in Hanle, told PTI.
Scientists from IISER Kolkata also added that such events are rare at Hanle, Ladakh because compared to the other sites, it is located at the far south. However, this stable auroral red arc was witnessed in Ladakh due to the solar magnetic storm.
As per Dibyendu Nandi, head of the Centre of Excellence in Space Sciences in India at IISER Kolkata stated that these red arcs are "likely caused by heating of the atmosphere by electric currents that are circulating between Earth and outer space".
"These ring currents get enhanced during geomagnetic disturbances induced by solar storms and thus the likelihood of observing the red auroral arcs is higher at times when we are in the midst of a severe geomagnetic storm," Nandi added further.
More Solar Storms Coming?
The solar storm of the weekend has been reported as the strongest one seen in over two decades. As per the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, this event was reported as unusual as he flares from the sun were associated to a spot that is 16 times the diameter of the Earth.
The last time a solar storm was reported was in 2003 and the magnetic flares from he storm were so powerful that it took out power in Sweden and damaged transformers in South Africa.
As per Nandi, the world is witnessing Space Weather that has not been seen in two decades. ". It might get worse as more solar storms are expected to impact Earth or maybe just more spectacular auroras for all," he added.
