On a hot and humid Florida night in late August 1859, the sky suddenly lit up. ...it was the Northern Lights–or aurora borealis.
The aurora...had somehow reached the subtropics and danced across the night sky. Reports of the aurora came in from as far south as Central America and some in the Rocky Mountains even believed it was morning because the sky was so bright.
Across the Atlantic Ocean in England, a wealthy amateur astronomer named Richard Carrington was also watching the cosmos. However, Carringon had his eyes on the Sun and its various sunspots and solar flares.
...“Carrington was sketching the spots’ areas and recording them. He noticed at a certain point that there were two bright patches of light that appeared in the sunspot group, which ought not to have been there.”--University of Glasgow astrophysicist Hugh Hudson
What Carrington and the awestruck people of the subtropical Atlantic saw were related. The aurora was a result of the most intense solar storm in recorded history, now called the Carrington Event.
