Rare Aurora Australis Lights Up Uruguay: Experts Warn of Potential Effects of Solar Storm

El Pais edition
On Friday night a number of privileged people were able to appreciate aurora australis from our country, something very unusual in Uruguay. “We are going through a big step solar storm which peaked last night and caused widespread and lasting auroras throughout the night. That’s why auroras were seen in some areas in the south of the country,” explained astronomer and doctor of Astronomy Gonzalo Tancredi to El País.

Light old man They are usually recorded near the North and South magnetic poles, which are not consistent with the geographic poles. Yesterday, they could be seen in South America and European countries that do not usually register these events.

In our country they were seen in some places in La Palomathe Pedrera, Punta del Diablo and the Went.

Also in Ushuaia, Reed y Pinamar, in Argentina and in Spain, United Kingdom y France which astonished the inhabitants.

What are auroras?

In simpler terms, auroras are a phenomenon that occurs when particles from the Sun that come out in a storm enter the Earth’s atmosphere and interact with a field Earth’s magnetic field, which usually avoids them. But it is when they reach the polar regions in interaction with the atoms of the atmosphere that they generate ionization and fluorescence. So it looks like the sky is going to be a “big curtain of colors”.

The color green and blue or red and pink depends only on the atoms and not on the area of ​​the planet and they are best appreciated at night. The intensity of the storm caused the auroras to expand into rarefied areas.

But beyond their appearance in the sky, solar storms of this magnitude can have other important effects. Tancredi explained that a solar storm like the one we are experiencing can affect satellite communications, GPS and power supplies, for example. “The last storm of this type occurred in 2003 and caused a major blackout South Africa“, the expert recalled.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Officea (NOAA) of the United States to mark the storm as a true G5 on the intensity scale that goes from 1 to 5. The organization asked satellite, electricity and airline companies around the world to be aware of the change in the Earth’s magnetic field.

“Currently the intensity is G4 but it is not ruled out that it could rise to G5 again. Although we are in Uruguay far from the South magnetic pole, the storm is still very active today and it is not completely excluded to see the aurora australis again tonight near the horizon,” said Tancredi .NOAA does the place projection of the position and projection of the aurora.

The largest recorded solar storm is the “Carrington event”, which occurred in 1859, which destroyed the telegraph network in the United States.