Heliophysicst here. This is not true. The flare that hit Earth on December 14th was an X-2.6 flare. While this is a large flare and the largest of the current solar maximum, it is nowhere near the largest ever recorded. The largest was on November 4th, 2003 (referred to as part of the Halloween storms), which was so strong it actually saturated the detectors. It was measured at an X-28, which is more than two orders of magnitude larger than Thursdays, but was estimated to be much larger than that.
Thank you! Do we have an estimate of what the Carrington Event might have been? Obviously they didn't have the same detectors in 1859.
Good question! Scientists have estimated the solar flare that occurred prior to the Carrington event might have at around an X-45 (Elvidge et al, 2018). I believe that this was the first flare ever recorded, but as you mentioned, we obviously we didn’t have modern detectors back then for measurement.
I recall the Halloween ones. I was out with my brother and friends walking around on a spooky wooded sled hill out in rural Michigan and we had full on red auroras. Very uncommon to see them at all in that region, and when we did they were faint green or white at best.
Heliophysicst here. This is not true. The flare that hit Earth on December 14th was an X-2.6 flare. While this is a large flare and the largest of the current solar maximum, it is nowhere near the largest ever recorded. The largest was on November 4th, 2003 (referred to as part of the Halloween storms), which was so strong it actually saturated the detectors. It was measured at an X-28, which is more than two orders of magnitude larger than Thursdays, but was estimated to be much larger than that.
Thank you! Do we have an estimate of what the Carrington Event might have been? Obviously they didn't have the same detectors in 1859.
Good question! Scientists have estimated the solar flare that occurred prior to the Carrington event might have at around an X-45 (Elvidge et al, 2018). I believe that this was the first flare ever recorded, but as you mentioned, we obviously we didn’t have modern detectors back then for measurement.
I recall the Halloween ones. I was out with my brother and friends walking around on a spooky wooded sled hill out in rural Michigan and we had full on red auroras. Very uncommon to see them at all in that region, and when we did they were faint green or white at best.