2023-04-24 12:51:00
Daniel Nimmervoll managed to take an extraordinarily rare photo on Sunday evening in the Mühlviertel: the night sky above his home town of Vorderweißenbach in the Urfahr district shone in delicate violet and pink tones – northern lights. The Mühlviertler, who has been involved with astrophotography for a long time and runs his own YouTube channel on this subject, recorded it with a special “AllSky” camera that runs throughout the night.
(To Daniel Nimmervoll’s website: www.astro-fotografie.at)
The OÖN also received images of the aurora borealis from the neighboring Waldviertel. Robert Candrák photographed the celestial spectacle over his home town of Lichtenau (Krems-Land district). The fact that the northern lights can be seen so far south, i.e. over Austria, is an exception – but not impossible. The OÖ Nachrichten last reported regarding such a phenomenon a good eight years ago: in March 2015, a photographer in the Innviertel region managed to take a similar picture. Then as now, the reason for the colorful glow was a strong solar storm. The one that swept across the earth on Monday night was the strongest since 2015.
“How exactly a solar storm affects the Earth depends heavily on its magnetic structure. Intensive research is being carried out in this area around the world in order to be able to predict solar storms as early as possible,” said Christian Möstl, head of the space weather office at Geosphere Austria in Graz. The sun constantly emits radiation and charged particles into space.
If this stream of particles (solar wind) is significantly stronger in a limited area of the sun for a short time, this is called a solar flare. If radiation and particles from a solar eruption hit the Earth’s magnetic field, this solar storm can cause the northern lights, for example, and in extreme cases even disrupt navigation systems and power grids.
more on the subject
Northern lights to see over the Innviertel
solar flare on Friday
A solar flare occurred on Friday, the solar storm of which hit the earth on Sunday evening. As of Monday 1:00 a.m., Earth was at the core of the solar storm. “Our measuring and forecasting systems already pointed out on Saturday a very probable structure of the current solar storm, which is actually being measured by satellites at the moment. This storm is still a little bit stronger than the storm on March 24 of this year. These two magnetic Storms represent the strongest events since June 2015,” said Möstl.
Numerous photos of possible northern lights in Austria are circulating on social media portals on Monday night. From North America to the south of the USA there were even very pronounced northern lights on Monday. “The intensity of the solar storm is likely to decrease over the course of Monday, so there should be no more northern lights in Austria on Tuesday night,” predicted Möstl.
More solar storms in the next few years
The sun is currently in a phase of increasing magnetic activity, which is expected to peak in 2025. The frequency of geomagnetic storms and northern lights will therefore increase over the next few years.
Space weather has only been studied more intensively for regarding 30 years. It turned out that in the past 150 years solar storms have occurred that would have devastating effects on today’s technical infrastructure. The repetition rate of such super solar storms is regarding 50 to 100 years.
Impact on critical infrastructure
Due to the possible impact of space weather on air traffic and on critical infrastructure such as power grids and satellite navigation, research into space weather and the development of forecasting and warning systems is becoming increasingly important. Geosphere Austria works in several projects on the prediction of space weather and, with the Conrad Observatory, operates one of the world’s most modern geophysical observatories, where space weather and solar storms are also measured.
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