Northern lights over Ukraine and not only (video)

Unusually colored sky was observed on the night of April 24 in some regions of Ukraine, scientists suggest that it was the aurora.

Ivan Kryachko, head of the laboratory for methodological support of education and science at the Main Astronomical Observatory of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, admitted that a powerful geomagnetic storm could be the cause of the unusual phenomenon.

A bewitching radiance was seen in Brovary in the Kiev region, in the Lviv and Chernihiv regions, in Kharkov and Volyn, in the Zhytomyr region. Residents of different regions of Belarus also observed the colorful phenomenon.

According to Kryachko, when the coronal masses of the Sun reach the charged atmosphere around the Earth, they penetrate into it, interacting with nitrogen and other molecules that are part of the air:

“There are times when the northern lights reach our latitudes, and it is associated with a geomagnetic storm. Different gases glow in different ways, one is green, the other is red, the third is crimson. And you get such a bright spectrum of colors.”

A powerful geomagnetic storm can be unsafe for aircraft and spacecraft. If it is strong, it can lead to the failure of power plants. Astronomer Volodymyr Kazhanov, an employee of the Kharkiv Planetarium, is also convinced that Ukrainians, together with residents of many countries in the northern hemisphere of the Earth, observed the aurora yesterday:

“There was a powerful geomagnetic storm G4 (Kp=8), associated with the bombardment of our planet by a coronal mass ejection that occurred on the Sun a few days ago.”

How writes “Live science”, the northern lights caused a strong geomagnetic storm due to a huge hole in the solar corona, due to which there was a huge disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field. This event caused auroras in the southern US states of Alabama and northern California.

The March 24 solar storm was the result of an “invisible” coronal mass ejection from the Sun, or a giant, fast-moving clump of plasma and magnetic field released by the Sun, writes Live Science Space. The outbreak was classified as a G4, or “severe” storm, on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s five-point scale. The consequences of the G4 storm may be radio outages for several hours and interruptions in navigation. However, no one foresaw the approach of the strongest solar storm in six years to hit the Earth.

Storms can also push auroras to much lower latitudes than usual. Auroras, or northern lights, usually only appear at high latitudes near the North and South Poles because the Earth’s magnetic field deflects solar wind electrons toward the poles. But when a solar storm strikes, more charged particles collide with gases in the upper atmosphere, meaning nighttime light shows could appear closer to the equator.

Northern lights over Moscow and St. Petersburg:

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