Ephemeris: 05/14/2024 – Last Friday’s geomagnetic storm

This is Ephemeris for Tuesday, May 14th. Today the Sun will be up for 14 hours and 48 minutes, setting at 9:03, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:13. The Moon, 1 day before first quarter, will set at 3:08 tomorrow morning.

Last Friday night’s displays of the Northern Lights were seen as far as the Caribbean, making the greatest what is called a geomagnetic storm of the last 20 years, and up there with the greatest storms ever recorded. Last Wednesday there was an immense solar flare coming from a large sunspot group on the Sun. That group was large enough to be able to be seen with eclipse glasses. So you might want to keep those eclipse glasses handy, and check out the Sun every once in a while. Only the largest sunspot groups will be visible. The flare causes the ejection of the part of the Sun’s corona, what astronomers call the coronal mass ejection or CME for short. These charged particles were intercepted by the Earth’s magnetic field and caused the aurora we saw.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EDT, UT–4 hours). They may be different for your location.

Addendum

The eruption of a CME, on May 8 that caused the aurora on the 10th recorded by the C3 coronagraph on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite in halo orbit of the Earth-Sun L1 point, a million miles sunward of the Earth. A coronagraph produces an artificial total solar eclipse using a disk in place of the moon to block the bright disk of the Sun. The two bright stars are the planets Jupiter on the left and Venus on the right. They will both cross behind the Sun with Jupiter leaving the evening sky and entering the morning sky and Venus leaving the morning sky and entering the evening sky. Credit: ESA. NASA.