Auroras are lighting up the skies in places they’ve never been seen before—what’s causing this sudden explosion of northern lights? A powerful shift in solar activity is rewriting the rules of aurora sightings, and the best displays in decades are just beginning.| The Daily Galaxy - Great Discoveries Channel
Solar radiation storms occur when a large-scale magnetic eruption, often causing a coronal mass ejection and associated solar flare, accelerates charged particles in the solar atmosphere to very high velocities. The most important particles are protons which can get accelerated to large fractions of the speed of light. At these velocities, the protons can traverse the 150 million km from sun to Earth in just 10’s of minutes or less. When they reach Earth, the fast moving protons penetrate t...| www.swpc.noaa.gov