aurora: 1859

September 3, 1859 Aurora: Inhabitants of Kingston, Jamaica, believed Cuba was being consumed by fire

THE AURORA IN THE TROPICS.—By the way of Havana we have some later intelligence from Jamaica. The Aurora Borealis was witnessed in that Island, it seems for the first time, perhaps, since its discovery by Christopher Colurnbus. So rare is the phenomenon in those latitudes, that it was taken for the glare of a fire and was associated with the recent riots [in Falmouth]. Up to the latest advices it had not entered into the imagination of the most astute to refer it to a celestial cause. It is described as magnificent and beautiful in the extreme.

(report in various US newspapers.)

So far I have not found a description of the aurora in Jamaica, so until I do, this account from Puerto Rico at the same latitude must give an idea of what Jamaicans saw in the early morning hours of September 2, 1859.

E. Loomis published in 1860 the following description of the magnificent aurora of 2 September 1859 seen in Puerto Rico:

Observations at Puerto Rico, West Indies (lat. 18° N), by M. du Colombier.

Having awakened at 2h. 30m. A.M. Sept. 2nd, I was greatly astonished to see my windows, which looked towards the north, brightly illumined by a brilliant purple light. Rising immediately, I perceived that this light proceeded from a magnificent aurora, which according to the testimony of the guard, commenced at 2h. A.M. and was observed till 4h. A.M. The luminous rays, red, purple, and violet, extended even to the zenith. The oldest inhabitants of this place declared that they had never before seen a phenomenon of this kind.

Maxwell Hall, 1916

Auroral sightings at the peak of the 1859 storm for the American sector. Closed circles represent overhead aurora; open circles represent visible aurora. The heavy curved line denotes the geomagnetic equator and the ⊕ symbol indicates the anti-Sun point. The lowest geomagnetic latitude at which the storm was observed was Honolulu (20◦; not shown).

Once in a while -- exactly when scientists cannot predict - - an event occurs on the surface of the Sun that releases a tremendous amount of energy in the form of a solar flare or a coronal mass ejection, an explosive burst of very hot, electrified gases with a mass that can surpass that of Mount Everest.

What transpired during the dog days of summer 1859, across the 150 million-kilometer (about 93 million-mile) chasm of interplanetary space that separates the Sun and Earth, was this: on August 28, solar observers noted the development of numerous sunspots on the Sun's surface. Sunspots are localized regions of extremely intense magnetic fields. These magnetic fields intertwine, and the resulting magnetic energy can generate a sudden, violent release of energy called a solar flare. From August 28 to September 2 several solar flares were observed. Then, on September 1, the Sun released a mammoth solar flare. For almost an entire minute the amount of sunlight the Sun produced at the region of the flare actually doubled.

"With the flare came this explosive release of a massive cloud of magnetically charged plasma called a coronal mass ejection," said Tsurutani. "These things actually fire out from the Sun radially, so not all of them head toward the Earth. But those that do usually take three to four days to reach Earth. This one took all of 17 hours and 40 minutes," he noted.

Not only was this coronal mass ejection an extremely fast mover, the magnetic fields contained within its charged particles were extremely intense and in direct opposition with Earth's magnetic fields. That meant the coronal mass ejection of September 1, 1859, overwhelmed Earth's own magnetic field, allowing charged particles to penetrate into Earth's upper atmosphere. The endgame to such a stellar event is one heck of a light show and more -- including potential disruptions of electrical grids and communications systems.

Back in 1859 the invention of the telegraph was only 15 years old and society's electrical framework was truly in its infancy. A 1994 solar storm caused major malfunctions to two communications satellites, disrupting newspaper, network television and nationwide radio service throughout Canada. Other storms have affected systems ranging from cell phone service and TV signals to GPS systems and electrical power grids. In March 1989, a solar storm much less intense than the perfect space storm of 1859 caused the Hydro-Quebec (Canada) power grid to go down for over nine hours, and the resulting damages and loss in revenue were estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

  science.nasa.gov