Three rapid bursts of charged particles that erupted toward Earth from the sun’s burning-hot outer atmosphere on Wednesday could lead to stunning auroras across a wide swath of the US and a colorful hue as far south as Florida to start the weekend.
Traveling at more than 1.5 million miles per hour, the trio of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) have merged into one pulse of plasma and magnetic field during the 60-hour trip from the sun’s atmosphere toward our own.
Tracking these developments, experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center issued a “severe geomagnetic storm watch” in advance of its arrival. This was the first such
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