See Last Weekend’s Aurora From Space

Did you see the “solar superstorm” that brought bright and colorful aurora to latitudes much closer to the equator than normal?

Many people in locations as unlikely as Arizona, California, Florida, the Bahamas and Mexico got to witness skies lit up by purples, blues and greens as the northern lights became visible across North America on Friday and Saturday.

They appeared in the wake of multiple coronal mass ejections from the sun, which sparked a very strong geomagnetic storm around the Earth.

However, the same display looked even better from the air—and particularly from space.

This (above) is what was seen on Friday, May 10 by the Solar & Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a project between ESA and NASA to study the sun’s outer corona and the solar wind. It orbits the sun from about 932,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from Earth. The bright spots either side are Jupiter and Venus.

Here’s a video of the solar flares captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which observed 82 solar flares from May 3 through May 9. They came largely from two active sunspot regions called AR 13663 and AR 13664. Nine were categorized as X-class solar flares.

There were followed on May 10 and May 11 when the SDO captured two strong solar flares, X5.8 and X1.5-class, respectively.

The International Space Station—which orbits the planet from around 250 miles up—often gets to see the aurora as it glides across the planet’s polar regions as it buzzes around the planet every 90 minutes or so.

However, it was in the wrong place during the recent aurora blizzard. According to NASA Astronaut and astrophotographer Don Petit, a few days each year the ISS orbits Earth aligned with the terminator that divides from day and night on Earth.

That means it doesn’t get dark for a few days—making astrophotography very difficult. It just so happened to coincide with the strong geomagnetic storm around the Earth.

NOAA’s Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) satellites also captured images of the aurora on May 11. A total of five JPSS satellites orbit Earth from pole to pole and cross the equator about 14 times each day, giving a full image of the planet twice each day. It’s their job to find severe weather events like hurricanes and blizzards, but in this, extreme space weather.

Earth is currently experiencing some of the strongest geomagnetic storms for over 20 years, with the northern and southern lights visible at latitudes that rarely see any aurora.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.