'Cannibal' geomagnetic storm to trigger colourful auroras. Here's when to watch

Good news for skygazers! A strong geomagnetic storm coupled with bright auroras might be visible to the naked eye tonight or on Friday night in the northern United States and Europe. These cosmic phenomena are occurring as the result of multiple explosions from the sun this week that led to the outbursts of plasma from the sun’s corona toward Earth. These are known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs).

CMEs are common but what’s different this time would be their consolidation into one humungous CME that is triggering geomagnetic storms and auroras. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are calling it a “cannibal” CME.

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CMEs can travel outward from the Sun at speeds as low as 250 kilometres per second to as high as 3,000 kilometres per second. A cannibal CME is one where a fast CME sweeps up a slower one ahead of it, causing intense magnetic fields.

‘Cannibal’ solar storm could strike tomorrow

Solar storms are super strong and could generate geomagnetic activity that disrupts radio communications and GPS navigation services. However, this storm may only be strong enough to produce aurora borealis (northern lights), which is a blessing in disguise.

The strongest explosion or solar flare was last detected Tuesday by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite. The flare was in the strongest category, falling just short of category X on the solar flare scale.

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It produced a pulse of extreme radiation that “blacked out shortwave radio communications across the South Pacific Ocean and parts of the Americas … for as much as an hour,” according to SpaceWeather.com.

Best time to see solar storm-generated auroras

The NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center said the CME is likely to cause at least a G2 geomagnetic storm, which is described as “moderate” on NOAA’s 1 to 5 geomagnetic storm scale. Storms of such intensity can cause high-latitude power systems to experience voltage alarms and transformer damage, according to NOAA. It can result in aurora seen as far south as New York and Idaho.

As per NASA’s estimates, the geomagnetic storm to strike Earth around mid-Friday, but it could arrive as soon as Thursday.

(With inputs from agencies)