1859's "Great Auroral Storm"—the week the Sun touched the earth
By Matthew Lasar
Noon approached on September 1, 1859, and British astronomer Richard Christopher Carrington was busy with his favorite pastime: tracking sunspots, those huge regions of the star darkened by shifts in its magnetic field. He projected the Sun's image from his viewing device onto a plate of glass stained a "pale straw colour," which gave him a picture of the fiery globe one inch shy of a foot in diameter.
The morning's work went as normal. Carrington patiently counted and charted spots, time-lining changes in their positions with a chronometer. Then he saw something unusual.
Richard Carrington's 1859 drawing of the solar flares he identified while sunspot watching. The "intensely bright" patches are marked A and B.
SAO/Nasa Astrophysics
"Two patches of intensely bright and white light broke out," he later wrote. Carrington puzzled over the flashes. "My first impression was that by some chance a ray of light had penetrated a hole in the screen attached to the object-glass," he explained, given that "the brilliancy was fully equal to that of direct sun-light."
The astronomer checked his gear. He moved the apparatus around a bit. To his surprise, the intense white patches stayed put. Realizing that he was an "unprepared witness of a very different affair," Carrington ran out of his studios to find a second observer. But when he brought this person back, he was "mortified to find" that the bright sections were "already much changed and enfeebled."
"Very shortly afterwards the last trace was gone," Carrington wrote. He kept watch on the region for another hour, but saw nothing more. Meanwhile, the explosive energy that he had seen rushed towards him and everyone else on earth.
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http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/05/1859s-great-auroral-stormthe-week-the-sun-touched-the-earth.ars
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