The Dazzling Sun of 2024
From totality to tremendous light shows, our sun put on a shining performance.
The sun had a big year in 2024. First, April brought a total solar eclipse that provided a wide swath of the continental U.S. with nearly four minutes of hushed totality. It also gave sun-gazers a chance to observe the outer layers of the sun’s atmosphere, which are normally obscured.
Then, on May 10–11, the aurora borealis seemed to appear everywhere, all at once. Reports came from North Texas, Arizona, even Alabama, Florida, and Tennessee — nearly the entire U.S. — that the night sky had turned green, purple, and pink. In places where the light was almost too faint for the naked eye, it revealed itself in camera photos. Another strong auroral show dazzled on Oct. 10–11.
The northern lights rarely extend so far south; May’s unusual light show resulted from the largest geomagnetic storm since 2003 to reach Earth’s atmosphere. A geomagnetic storm begins when the sun releases a blob of high-energy ions and electrons, called a coronal mass ejection (CME), in Earth’s direction.