GREENE – One person said it looked like a big pink cloud. Another described it as red and orange haze.
On Thursday night, after the sun had hurled another huge cloud of highly charged particles toward Earth, the skies above central and western Maine turned colors.
“It’s pretty neat. I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Michael Bureau, who could see the bright auroras from his backyard in Greene.
Along with most curious people who called the Sun Journal and local police stations Thursday night, Bureau had no idea what was causing the phenomenon.
It is most commonly referred to as a geomagnetic storm or solar flares. And, in the past 48 hours, the Earth has experienced two of them.
The auroras are caused by big electrical gas clouds ejected from the sun toward Earth at 4 million to 5 million miles an hour.
One hit early Wednesday. The other followed Thursday afternoon. And the resulting light shows continued late into the night.
The lights appear as the charged particles slam into the Earth’s outer magnetic field. It seemed that the best views could be seen in rural areas where there aren’t many street lights.
“It was a big mass of pink and it had rays like a sun,” said Miranda Bean, who saw the lights from her home in Augusta. “It was really beautiful.”
The solar outbursts pose no direct danger to people on Earth’s surface. But they can damage satellites and disrupt high-frequency radio communications.
No major problems were reported in central and western Maine on Wednesday or Thursday.
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