A dramatic solar storm lights up the Earth

2 SEPTEMBER 1859 | The "Carrington Event" causes auroras and telegraph chaos

- Helen Carr

When British amateur astronomer Richard Carrington went into his private observatory, connected to his home near London, shortly before noon on 1 September 1859, he intended to sketch sunspots. But his attention was seized by something he had never seen before on the Sun: "two patches of intensely bright and white light". Carrington - and at the same time, fellow astronomer Richard Hodgson - had just witnessed a massive solar flare. It lasted only a few minutes, but the subatomic particles it hurled at Earth would cause the greatest recorded geomagnetic storm in history, peaking the next day.