Amazing night: northern lights across the whole of France

The Northern Lights last May were equaled, if not exceeded. The night of “severe” level magnetic storm was even more spectacular for some in France. Spain has even benefited from this enchantment of the sky and space. Amateur observers were surprised to see them from city centers, particularly in Nantes.

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To be honest, at the (very) early morning hour when we are writing these lines, after having gone to contemplate and photograph the spectacle in the middle of the night, it continues. The scientific indices are still extremely high, we will come back to this later.

A few photos as a breakfast to illustrate how these northern lights arrived in the sky – or polar lights, it’s the same thing, although France has not moved towards the pole…

And then the festival begins:

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And to fully understand what we can see with the naked eye and what a camera in night mode (or “long pause”) can image, here is a comparison:

And practically the same photo of the same sky, at the same moment, with a longer pause and a more efficient camera:

We recommend that you follow X-Twitter accounts, which monitor and inform the community in real time (NotreEspace, the author of his lines, the excellent Astropierre or AurorAlpes, for example). You can also watch on SpaceWeather. Exactly, yesterday around 7:30 p.m., all the signs of a fantastic night presented themselves and several accounts raised the alarm:

The KP index, based on 9, is an index of geomagnetic activity. From a value of 7, auroras can be perceptible, but rather in long pauses on the phone. In May, like last night, the KP index was at 8 at its highest, which is what we need to reach to enter the naked eye visibility threshold, in our opinion.

The G index is that of geomagnetic storms. It starts at 1 for a light geomagnetic storm and was set at 4 last night and last May. G4 is therefore equivalent to a “severe” geomagnetic storm. The map ofoval auroral shows you where the chances of observing the Northern Lights are greatest: the thicker the red, the better!

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High KP (8/9) and G4 index = two reasons to look north!

In summary, if Kp = 9 and G = 4 like last night, then you can head towards a clear sky, in clear weather too, and legitimately hope that the earth’s magnetic field offers you the wonders of which it is capable.

To be truly rigorous, we must specify that our Earth’s magnetic field must be configured in such a way as to allow particles from the ejection of solar matter (known as coronal mass, or CMe) to pass through. This is the Bz index that applies and it must be negative, which of course was the case last night.

But where did this material come from? Areas of our star where the sunspots AR 3848, AR3849 and AR 3850 were located, which we had just photographed with a suitable solar filter (otherwise the telescope would have burned) this Tuesday, the day when the ejections of matter were directed towards the Earth took place:

For 36 hours, let’s see what the Sun has expelled and is responsible for our dream night. Note three elements in this incredible suite of photos from the SoHO satellite: the comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas, whose hair shines for several million kilometers in the middle of multiple CMe (solar flares); the burst of solar protons which stains the image with white spots; and Mercury which passes almost anonymously on the left.

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But will this continue for a long time?

Frankly, as much as we want to be careful and not give false hope: the answer is yes. We are in the middle of the solar maximum – which was theoretically supposed to start in 2025, but is perhaps a little earlier – and the most likely thing is that it will continue for a few months like this. Let’s remember that a week ago, the Sun blessed us with the biggest X-ray flash in the last 15 years!

These cycles last 11 years, but some are stronger than others, and that is clearly the case here. We are living in a truly favorable time for astronomical wonder with the Northern Lights, the comet which returns this weekend, and space, including the takeoff of the Starship IFT-5 on Sunday promises to be unforgettable.

And finally, a photo of what we could see with a little more luck: comet AND northern lights (fingers crossed):