A Raging Solar Storm Is Hitting the Earth Right Now. 1859's "Great Auroral Storm"—the week the Sun touched the earth. Noon approached on September 1, 1859, and British astronomer Richard Christopher Carrington was busy with his favorite pastime: tracking sunspots, those huge regions of the star darkened by shifts in its magnetic field.
He projected the Sun's image from his viewing device onto a plate of glass stained a "pale straw colour," which gave him a picture of the fiery globe one inch shy of a foot in diameter. The morning's work went as normal. Carrington patiently counted and charted spots, time-lining changes in their positions with a chronometer. How The Biggest Solar Storm Since 2005 Is Going to Affect You. News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids.