News on April 17, according to media reports, affected by the disappearance of the solar dark streak on April 13, a geomagnetic storm occurred from 17:00 on April 16 to 8:00 on the 17th, Beijing time.The maximum intensity occurred from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. on the 17th.A major geomagnetic storm with a Kp index of 8.
With the emergence of this geomagnetic storm,Many photographers have captured wonderful auroras in various parts of our country.It is understood that geomagnetic storms are global violent disturbances of the Earth's magnetic field.
We know that the corona is the outermost layer of the solar atmosphere. When there is strong solar activity (including but not limited to flares), coronal mass ejections will occur. A single ejection can throw billions of tons of solar material away from the sun's surface at a high speed of hundreds of kilometers per second.
These solar materials not only have kinetic energy formed by the accumulation of huge mass and speed, they also carry the sun's powerful magnetic field energy. Once they "hit" the earth, they will cause changes in the direction and size of the geomagnetic field. This is called a geomagnetic storm.
On Earth, the most intuitive impact of geomagnetic storms is the aurora. When a geomagnetic storm occurs, charged particles in the geomagnetic field will enter the earth's atmosphere along the magnetic field lines, causing collisions between atmospheric molecules and atoms to excite fluorescence, which is what we often call aurora.