Categories: Aurora

This is What Can Happen When a CME Hits Earth

The size of Earth compared to sunspot AR1692 on March 15, 2013. Screenshot from the video by Göran Strand.

This video taken by Göran Strand from Östersund, Sweden shows what happened on March 17, 2013 when a Coronal Mass Ejection hit Earth’s magnetic field. Two days earlier, sunspot AR1692 had produced a M1-class solar flare that resulted in the CME that hit Earth.

This time lapse from an all-sky camera captures the magnificent sky show between 19:20 and 23:35 UT on the 17th.

Strand said via email that this time lapse consists of 2464 raw images for a total data amount of 30Gb from the 17th. The stunning photo of the Sun is a hydrogen alpha mosaic he made from 10 images that was captured on March 16.

Beautiful!

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Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/