Solar Tsunami: Encore Tonight

“Solar tsunami” brings aurora borealis displays to Minnesota, Wisconsin, Norway, and other northern latitudes.
Solar Tsunami: Encore Tonight
Composite image of multiple solar flares on the sun. Courtesy of JAXX/NASA.gov
Updated:

<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/158270main_solarflare.jpg" alt="Composite image of multiple solar flares on the sun. (Courtesy of JAXX/NASA.gov)" title="Composite image of multiple solar flares on the sun. (Courtesy of JAXX/NASA.gov)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1816612"/></a>
Composite image of multiple solar flares on the sun. (Courtesy of JAXX/NASA.gov)
A “solar tsunami” eruption of charged particles from a solar flare swept over the Earth on Tuesday night, bringing colorful displays of aurora borealis to Minnesota, Wisconsin, Norway, and other places in the northern latitudes.

Earlier on, satellites orbiting Earth found that almost the entire Earth-facing side of the sun erupted on Aug. 1 in a series of C-class solar flares, driving coral mass ejections (CMEs) toward the Earth.

As one CME encountered the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field Tuesday night, the blast sparked a geomagnetic storm that lasted for nearly 12 hours—enough time for auroras to spread all the way from Europe to North America, according to spaceweather.com.

The auroras, also known as northern lights, gleamed turning the sky purple, green, blue, and orange.

Scientists are anticipating the arrival of a second, and possibly bigger CME cloud on Wednesday night as it is already en route across the 93-million-mile journey from the sun to the Earth.