None of the lines worked, and telegraph paper spontaneously caught on fire. The aurora and disconnected telegraphs were both the working of the largest solar storm recorded in history. As charged ...

The Great Auroral Storm had actually begun several days earlier with a similar incident on August 28, but it was Carrington and another astronomer, Richard Hodgson, who identified one of the solar ...

The Sun is a hot mess right now. Solar maximum is fast approaching, and a giant dark spot on the surface of the Sun keeps growing while spewing radiation out to space in the process. Sunspot R3664 ...

In 1859, astronomer Richard Carrington was studying the Sun when he witnessed the most intense geomagnetic storm recorded in history. The storm, triggered by a giant solar flare, sent brilliant ...

Also as a result of the storm, Northern Lights, normally seen near the North Pole, were seen as far away as Rome, Hawaii, and the South Pole. In 2003 a group of scientists with expertise in space and ...

Two massive solar storms appearing four days apart in the late summer of 1859 gave “the week the sun touched the earth” its name. The first one reached here Aug. 28, and the second one Sept. 1.

Amazingly, in 1859, before all that monitoring equipment was put in place, an astronomer spotted the flare before the storm reached Earth. Carrington's observation. The figures labeled A and B ...

The solar superstorm of 1859 was the fiercest ever recorded. Auroras filled the sky as far south as the Caribbean, magnetic compasses went haywire and telegraph systems failed.

It was known as “the week the sun touched the earth.” In late August and early September 1859, two geomagnetic solar superstorms walloped our planet, illuminating the nighttime sky of ...

150 years ago, the world was engulfed in the largest electromagnetic storm on record, the "Carrington Event" of 1859. How did humanity react to the week-long solar maelstrom, and what will we do ...