An unexpected solar storm hit the Earth in the past few days, causing no damage but only unexpected auroras.
The instruments of NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory revealed it on Sunday and the causes that triggered it are still not fully understood.
A testimony of how much work there is still to fully understand the space weather whose storms can cause serious economic damage to space infrastructures such as satellites.
The first signs of a solar storm hitting the Earth's magnetic field were recorded on Sunday morning and in a few hours the intensity of the solar wind grew to a speed of over 600 kilometers per second, triggering a geomagnetic storm defined as class G2. , on a scale ranging from G1 to G5, where 5 is the maximum level.
Despite the great progress made in recent decades in the study of space weather, "the event was not foreseen", explains SpaceWeather, one of the specialized reference sites in the sector.
The storm was caused by the so-called solar wind, a flow of particles and plasma ejected from the surface of the Sun which in this period is in a phase of full activity.
Since it was a rather weak event, there were no consequences for satellites and instruments in orbit but just to protect them there has been a very accurate space weather forecast service for some time.
"The flow of solar wind that gave birth to this event is a bit of an enigma," continues the SpaceWeather post, and confirms that there is still a lot to understand about our star.
However, the many fans of polar auroras enjoyed the event because the storm produced clearly visible 'dancing lights', despite it being summer, even from Denmark and Pennsylvania
