Jane dreams of the desert again, with narration provided by “Anubis”.

 

Trivia Time

While looking up how far south an aurora could be seen I ran across the massive 1859 solar event. Some of the fascinating results from this historic coronal superstorm included:

  • Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases giving their operators electric shocks.
  • Telegraph pylons threw sparks and some telegraph operators could continue to send and receive messages despite having disconnected their power supplies.
  • It was so bright over the Rocky Mountains that gold miners woke up and began preparing their breakfast because they thought it was already morning.
  • The aurora was visible as far from the poles as Sub-Saharan Africa.
  • On July 23, 2012 a similar sized Superstorm was observed; it missed the Earth.

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