Northern lights over Guadalajara

It is a very unusual landscape. It happened in various parts of the province of Guadalajara, such as Humanes in La Campiña, Ocentejo in Alto Tajo or Tobillos. Northern lights have been seen over Guadalajara. The cause? The largest solar flare in 22 years. Solar hyperactivity is due to the periodic variation in magnetic activity. It happens approximately every eleven years. It causes the observation of incredible phenomena in anomalous latitudes, has stated the Astronomical Group of Guadalajara, Astroguada.

The huge solar eruption that is at the origin of this phenomenon took place around 5:40 p.m. on Sunday. It was in a sunspot located almost in the center of the Sun. It reached its peak around 7:00 p.m. in peninsular time.

Amazing duration

An active region is an area of ​​the Sun's surface that has an exceptionally strong magnetic field. It can cause phenomena such as sunspots and flares or coronal mass ejections (CMEs). The intensity in these fields can exceed up to a thousand times the average for this type of events due to the twisting and movement of the plasma.

The amazing thing about this eruption is that the intensity remained unchanged for more than four hours. The ejection of that coronal mass caused severe S4-level solar radiation. It resulted in a G4 category geomagnetic storm, which the scientific community has described as the most intense in the last 22 years.

The particles in the form of protons and electrons that solar storms contain are the cause of the northern lights. This phenomenon could be captured in the town of Humanes, very close to the capital. The northern lights over Guadalajara were also seen from the town of Tobillos.

Shocking images

40 kilometers away as the crow flies, astrophotographer Raúl Villaverde captured this spectacle of natural lights from the town of Ocentejo. It occurred due to the collision of solar particles with gases in the Earth's atmosphere.

The red and pinkish hue of the northern lights could be seen on the night from Monday to Tuesday in numerous parts of Spain. It is due to the collision of solar storm particles with oxygen atoms at very high altitudes. That is, beyond 240 kilometers in the ionosphere, a crucial layer of the atmosphere where solar radiation ionizes gases.