Exceptional solar activity produces Northern Lights further south than usual

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In Sodankylä in the heart of Finnish Lapland, a rare display of a Northern Lights formation known as "the crown" or "corona" was seen early on Monday morning.
      The formation draws its name from its crown-like shape. Unlike ordinary Northern Lights "the crown" can stay stationary in the night sky for tens of minutes.
      Weather permitting, the Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis, could be a common sight even in the south of Finland in the coming days.
     
A series of solar flares erupting on the surface of the sun has caused this exceptional geomagnetic storm, the visible manifestation of which is the Aurora Borealis.
      Measurements performed by the Finnish Meteorological Institute indicate a disturbance of the highest order in the earth's magnetic field.
      The greatest disturbances occur in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, where charged particles of the solar wind guided by the force lines of the earth's magnetic field collide with gas molecules of the ionosphere, producing visible light.
      The magnetic storm is a result of a coronal mass ejection from the sun that started on Friday, November 5. The storm is expected to pick up on Wednesday or Thursday, when particles from eruptions that occurred on the 6th and the 7th of November will hit the Earth.
     
This type of solar activity is harmless to people, but the electric charges surrounding the planet, the accumulation of particles, and the high-frequency electromagnetic radiation may interfere with satellites.
      Last year, a similar magnetic storm caused a power failure that lasted for several hours in the Swedish city of Malmö.
      In solar flares, enormous amounts of the sun's matter, protons and electrons, are being ejected into space. In addition, the sun emits strong radiation that interferes, for example, with the frequencies used by radio amateurs.


Links:
  Michigan Tech. Aurora Pages
  The Northern Lights (Virtual Finland)
  Finnish Meteorological Institute

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