{"id":857,"date":"2009-09-05T05:52:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-04T19:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2009\/09\/05\/carrington-flares-aurora-where-were-you-on-august-4-1972\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T10:17:40","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T00:17:40","slug":"carrington-flares-aurora-where-were-you-on-august-4-1972","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2009\/09\/05\/carrington-flares-aurora-where-were-you-on-august-4-1972\/","title":{"rendered":"Carrington Flares, Aurora, Where were you on August 4, 1972?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEjZUXfiXn9XhSyIQUiOGlDpLf-ZwWAPtTyJntAqVBcQqs_SYL9PchIo7XS9p_DnUEhk74JREyiFZ1l1UvmseLrMkVCkeNAKk2DJp901r337mvX_h3sBeaBVNgP-9a9pgZGBaW998h8LMAk\/s1600-h\/aurora1_sts39_med.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 225px; height: 167px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/aurora1_sts39_med.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377857376328534610\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a> Greg, KC2DWF, sent me a really interesting story about the work of the English solar astronomer Richard Carrington. He discovered a kind of solar flare (named for him) that comes along every few centuries and could knock us all off the air.<\/p>\n<p>As I was reading the article, I started to think about a childhood event that I think I mentioned in one of the podcasts. I have vivid memories of a summer night in which the skies were filled with really bright colorful lights. The article about Carrington notes that there was a major solar flare (but not of Carrington levels) on August 4, 1972 that caused auroral displays far into the southern part of the USA. The year is a bit later than I thought (I was 13 at that time) but the time of year is correct. And that flare was big enough to have caused really vivid aurora over New York. <br \/>The NASA site <a href=\"http:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/headlines\/y2000\/ast25apr_1m.htm\">&#8220;Brushfires in the Sky&#8221;<\/a> provides this very helpful list for people, like me, trying to figure out what we saw, and when:<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: rgb(51, 51, 255);\">The <i>Aurora Watchers Handbook<\/i> lists the following &#8220;Great Geomagnetic Storms&#8221; of the 20th century when auroras were seen much farther south than usual. If you have a childhood memory of aurora borealis, it may have come from one of these storms.<\/p>\n<ul style=\"color: rgb(51, 51, 255);\">\n<li>October 31 &#8211; November 1, 1903 <\/li>\n<li>September 25, 1909 <\/li>\n<li>May 13-16, 1921 <\/li>\n<li>April 16, 1938 <\/li>\n<li>February 11, 1958 <\/li>\n<li>July 8, 1958 <\/li>\n<li>August 4, 1972 <\/li>\n<li>December 19, 1980 <\/li>\n<li>March 13-14, 1989 <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Looks to me like my event was August 4, 1972. Anyone else have memories of this storm? <\/p>\n<p>Here is the article that Greg sent:<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/headlines\/y2008\/06may_carringtonflare.htm\">http:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/headlines\/y2008\/06may_carringtonflare.htm<br \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Greg, KC2DWF, sent me a really interesting story about the work of the English solar astronomer Richard Carrington. He discovered a kind of solar flare (named for him) that comes along every few centuries and could knock us all off the air. As I was reading the article, I started to think about a childhood &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2009\/09\/05\/carrington-flares-aurora-where-were-you-on-august-4-1972\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Carrington Flares, Aurora, Where were you on August 4, 1972?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","category-solar-cycle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=857"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":859,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857\/revisions\/859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}