Northern Europe was treated to a spectacular display of the Aurora Borealis Thursday night, thanks to a severe solar storm that unexpectedly affected most of the Earth.
The solar storm –- the first major storm in more than a decade -- treated sky-watchers across Europe and as far west as the East Coast of the United States to some of the most breathtaking displays of the Northern Lights in recent memory.
"I've just spent the last two hours gazing up at a sky literally on fire with swaying red curtains and billowing veils of pale green and white streamers," one observer told the BBC. "Beams are everywhere. At one point, everything merged overhead, and staring up at it was like staring into some kind of pink worm hole. Unbelievable."
The lights, which are normally only visible in polar regions, were triggered by a massive solar flare ejected from the Sun on Tuesday.
The flare was first detected by ACE, a probe monitoring the solar wind that is about a million miles closer to the Sun than the Earth.
ACE made the news earlier this week when it passed through the exceptionally long tail of Comet Hyakutake.
The stream of extremely fast-moving particles hit the planet at approximately 12:40 p.m. EDT, about an hour after ACE detected it.
The storm was centered over Ireland, although the aurora was seen on the Eastern Seaboard, according to Boulder, Colorado's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Environment Center.
The storm is expected to continue into Saturday, the center said.
Although the eye of the storm will rotate westward towards the United States from Ireland, it is unlikely to produce anything as spectacular as Thursday night's fireworks.
"The storm is kind of dwindling down," said Larry Combs, a space weather forecaster at the center. "You will have to go up to Greenland to see some lights (Friday night)."
However, Combs said displays of the Northern Lights will likely become common as far south as Massachusetts, the Midwest, and even Northern California as we enter a period of intense solar activity known as the solar maximum.
During the solar maximum, which has an 11-year cycle, the center predicts 100 "severe" solar storms and four "extreme" events. Thursday night's storm was the first severe storm in the current cycle.
During the last solar maximum, in 1989, an "extreme" solar storm knocked out Quebec's power system, which took months to fix.
"Eleven years ago, we didn't have nearly as many satellites we depend on for telephone hookups and other communications," Coombs said. "The potential for disruption is much, much greater."
Solar storms are created by sun spots, or solar flares, that emit huge numbers of electronically charged particles. When the stream of particles hits the Earth's magnetic field, the interaction causes the light displays known as the Aurora Borealis.
