The grand aurorae borealis seen in Colombia in 1859

Abstract

On Thursday, September 1, 1859, the British astronomer Richard Carrington, for the first time ever, observes a spectacular gleam of visible light on the surface of the solar disk, the photosphere. The Carrington Event, as it is nowadays known by scientists, occurred because of the high solar activity that had visible consequences on Earth, in particular reports of outstanding aurorae activity that amazed thousands of people in the western hemisphere during the dawn of September 2. The geomagnetic storm, generated by the solar-terrestrial event, had such a magnitude that the auroral oval expanded towards the equator, allowing low latitudes, like Panama's 9 • N, to catch a sight of the aurorae. An expedition was carried out to review several historical reports and books from the northern cities of Colombia allowed the identification of a narrative from Montería, Colombia (8 • 45' N), that describes phenomena resembling those of an aurorae borealis, such as fire-like lights, blazing and dazzling glares, and the appearance of an immense S-like shape in the sky. The very low latitude of the geomagnetic north pole in 1859, the lowest value in over half a millennia, is proposed to have allowed the observations of auroral events at locations closer to the equator, and supports the historical description found in Colombia. The finding of such chronicle represents one of the most complete descriptions of low-latitude sightings of aurorae caused by the Carrington Event.

Observations of Low‐Latitude Red Aurora in Mexico During the 1859 Carrington Geomagnetic Storm

“…The figure indicates the eyewitnesses auroral (orange dots) and magnetic (blue dots) observations on 2 September 1859. These Mexican observations of the effects of the Carrington Event complement the records in other countries (Green et al, ), such as Guatemala (Ribeiro et al, ), Colombia (Moreno Cárdenas et al, ), Spain (Farrona et al, ), Australia (Humble, ), and East Asia (Hayakawa et al, ) among others, confirming that this was a global event with planetary repercussions.…”

“…Green and Boardsen () plotted the auroral observations, finding the equatorward boundary as ∼18° in magnetic latitude (MLAT) on 2/3 September 1859. Hayakawa et al () and Moreno Cárdenas et al () surveyed historical reports from low‐magnetic latitude and confirmed the auroral visibility down to 19.9° in MLAT and 23.1° in MLAT, respectively.…”

“…Geomagnetic dipole latitude is shown as blue wavy lines with the yellow and orange lines the minimum and maximum extent of the auroral oval from Holzworth‐Meng model, respectfully. The figure adapted from Green and Boardsen () adds the sites in Mexico, Guatemala (Ribeiro et al, ), Colombia (Moreno Cárdenas et al, ), Spain Farrona et al (), and East Asia (Hayakawa et al, ; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5215858/figure/F2/).…”

Temporal and Spatial Evolutions of a Large Sunspot Group and Great Auroral Storms Around the Carrington Event in 1859

“…Note that throughout this report, we use the terms "sunspot group" and "active region" as synonyms. We also recover and examine the contemporary auroral reports in the Russian and Japanese archival material, revise the temporal and spatial evolutions of the auroral visibility using known auroral reports (Farrona et al, 2011;González-Esparza & Cuevas-Cardona, 2018;Hayakawa et al, 2016, Hayakawa, Ebihara, Hand, et al, 2018Humble, 2006;Kimball, 1960;Moreno Cárdenas et al, 2016), and compare them with available magnetograms (Kumar et al, 2016;Nevanlinna, 2006Nevanlinna, , 2008. With this 10.1029/2019SW002269 Space Weather combined information, we contextualize the results in conjunction with those of the other extreme magnetic storms in observational history (see Chapman, 1957a).…”

Uma andorinha só não faz verão: 160 anos do legado de Richard Carrington

“…Os efeitos dessa perturbação no campo magnético terrestre, ou tempestade magnética, foram rapidamente notados em escalas globais. Auroras boreais e austrais foram vistas em diversas regiões de baixas latitudes (menores que 60 • ), incluindo Havaí, Flórida, e Washington, D.C. nos Estados Unidos [23][24][25], México [26], Colômbia [27], Espanha [28], Austrália [29],Ásia Oriental [30] e Chile, Portugal, leste da Rússia, Austrália e Nova Zelândia [31]. A Fig.…”