Carrington Event
geomagnetic solar storm
The Carrington Event was the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history, peaking on 1–2 September 1859 during solar cycle 10. It created strong auroral displays that were reported globally and caused sparking and even fires in telegraph stations. The geomagnetic storm was most likely the result of a coronal mass ejection (CME) from the Sun colliding with Earth's magnetosphere.
The geomagnetic storm was associated with a very bright solar flare on 1 September 1859. It was observed and recorded independently by British astronomers Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson—the first records of a solar flare. A geomagnetic storm of this magnitude occurring today has the potential to cause widespread electrical disruptions and blackouts as well as damage to the electrical power grid and satellites.
History
Geomagnetic storm
On 1 and 2 September 1859, one of the largest geomagnetic storms (as recorded by ground-based magnetometers) occurred. Estimates of the storm strength (Dst) range from −0.80 to −1.75 μT.
The geomagnetic storm is thought to have been caused by a coronal mass ejection (CME) that traveled directly toward Earth, taking 17.6 hours to make the 150×10^6 km (93×10^6 mi) journey. Typical CMEs take several days to arrive at Earth, but it is believed that the relatively high speed of this CME was made possible by a prior CME, perhaps the cause of the large aurora event on 29 August that "cleared the way" of ambient solar wind plasma for the Carrington Event.
Associated solar flare
Just before noon on 1 September 1859, the English astronomers Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson independently recorded the earliest observations of a solar flare.
“Carrington Event” enters the record as geomagnetic solar storm. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Carrington, Event and geomagnetic can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Carrington Event” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.