Comment: Oh yeah folks, we're in the middle of it now!
On the south Pacific island of New Caledonia, no one expects to see auroras. Ever. Situated about halfway between Tonga and Australia, the cigar-shaped island is too close to the equator for Northern or Southern Lights. Yet on May 10, 2024, this happened:
"I have rarely been so happy when taking a photo!" says Frédéric Desmoulins, who photographed the display from Boulouparis in the island's south province. "I could see the red color of the auroras with my naked eye. According to the New Caledonian Astronomy Society, these photos are the first for this territory."
"The auroral visibility from New Caledonia is really unique and extremely valuable," says Hisashi Hayakawa, a space weather researcher at Japan's Nagoya University. "The last time sky watchers saw auroras in the area may have been during the Carrington Event of Sept. 1859, when auroras were sighted from a ship in the Coral Sea."
Comment: Now get this: in December 1859 the Atlantic magazine published a detailed report about the 1859 Carrington Event, and noted, among many other things in its superb report (oh for the days when The Atlantic published good research), that: Guess what erupted in New Caledonia three days after auroras were sighted there... serious rioting akin to a 'civil war':
France deploys military to quell independence protests and serious rioting in Pacific territory of New Caledonia
Spaceweather.com also reports that another massive 'Carrington-class' sunspot is poised to hurl a geomagnetic storm Mars' way...