{"id":214481,"date":"2016-03-24T13:02:51","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T16:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/?p=214481"},"modified":"2016-03-24T13:02:51","modified_gmt":"2016-03-24T16:02:51","slug":"the-night-the-sky-caught-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/the-night-the-sky-caught-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"The night the sky caught fire"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Record

British Geological Survey<\/span>Record of a geomagnetic stormBritish Geological Survey<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Colombian researchers have found evidence that a spectacle of colorful and dazzlingly bright lights illuminated the city of Monter\u00eda, Colombia, on the night of September 2, 1859.\u00a0 These lights have the same origin as the polar aurora events commonly seen at latitudes close to the North or South Poles: they are emitted when electrically charged particles ejected by the Sun collide with the Earth’s atmosphere.\u00a0 On September 1, 1859, as British astronomer Richard Carrington was observing a dark spot on the surface of the Sun, a brilliant flash suddenly erupted from it.\u00a0 This mass ejection of charged particles from the Sun, known as the Carrington Event, is considered by modern-day astrophysicists to be the largest on record.\u00a0 The explosion produced extraordinary polar aurorae over the two following days.\u00a0 Many newspaper of the time reported sightings of these events in Northern Hemisphere countries far below the Arctic Circle, where aurorae normally appear.\u00a0 Cities in Cuba and Panama were already known to have witnessed the light show.\u00a0 But now, Freddy C\u00e1rdenas and Sergio S\u00e1nchez from the Gimnasio Campestre school in the city of Bogot\u00e1, Colombia, in partnership with astronomer Santiago Dom\u00ednguez from the National University of Colombia, have discovered a description of the aurora written at the time by Jos\u00e9 In\u00e9s Ruiz, vicar at the cathedral of Monter\u00eda, located south of Panama City (Advances in Space Research<\/i><\/em>, September 1, 2015).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Researchers have found evidence of a geomagnetic storm in 1859","protected":false},"author":475,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[168],"tags":[205],"coauthors":[785],"class_list":["post-214481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technoscience","tag-astronomy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/475"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214481"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=214481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}