Auroras danced across northern skies overnight as Earth's magnetic field underwent G3 (strong) geomagnetic storming.
The culprit: a potent one-two punch of recent coronal mass ejection (CME) arrivals plus the onset of a fast solar wind stream soaring toward Earth from a large coronal hole.
As charged particles poured into Earth's upper atmosphere, vivid auroral displays became visible from mid-latitude locations as far south as New York, London and northern France.
The storm is now easing, but forecasters still expect periods of G1 - G2 (minor - moderate) storming through today, keeping aurora watchers busy for at least another night.
Shivan Mahendrarajah The Cradle Tue, 03 Mar 2026 17:26 UTC
Beijing's expanding satellite network now hangs over the region as an unmistakable warning to Washington and Tel Aviv: their every deployment is visible.
When MizarVision began publishing satellite images of the US force buildup in the Persian Gulf and Jordan ahead of the US-Israel war on Iran that began on 28 February 2026, the internet reacted instantly. The photographs circulated widely because they revealed something western providers had carefully avoided showing.
For years, companies such as Planet Labs and Maxar filtered or withheld imagery deemed sensitive to US and Israeli interests. The public rarely gained access to unvarnished visuals of American deployments in West Asia. MizarVision disrupted that pattern and forced those deployments into the open.
Obvious questions followed: Why would a Chinese firm release material that western corporations consistently suppress? Who is behind MizarVision? Why is this Chinese company publishing sensitive images that the public has never seen before?
MizarVision, according to publicly available information, is a reseller of images captured by privately owned Chinese satellites. Yet, since Beijing pre-authorizes the release of sensitive information, its motives for doing so have raised eyebrows.
The roles of China's satellite fleet in monitoring US and Israeli activity, and in helping Yemen's Ansarallah-aligned forces and Iran's military during the 12-day US-Israeli war on the Islamic Republic last June, are suspected by American and Israeli diplomats and security professionals; however, the broader public was mostly unaware, assuming that Iran obtained images for military purposes from its own military satellites.
Iran operates a modest satellite program. It lacks the density, redundancy, and persistent coverage required for sustained high-resolution military intelligence. Just as Israel depends on US reconnaissance architecture, Iran leans on a technologically advanced partner able to provide continuous surveillance and rapid tasking.
A German cyclist riding solo around the world to highlight "the existential danger of climate change" has been killed by a suspected lightning strike.
A cyclist was killed by lightning while biking around the world to combat climate change. Florian Berg had spent over a year peddling across the globe. The latest stretch of his journey took him to South America. But the German climate activist died while cycling through the mountains of Peru.
The 29-year-old was caught in a torrential storm in the Andes on Saturday (17 Jan) evening. Earlier that day, he'd set off from Huaraz City to reach the Pastoruri Glacier in the mountain range. Florian sought shelter in his tent, before being zapped by lightning. In his final moments, he had apparently called for help.
Two incredibly rare supernovas that erupted billions of years ago provide a unique opportunity to explain cosmology's biggest mystery — How fast is the universe expanding?
But there's a twist: Even though astronomers have already observed these exploding stars, we will have to wait up to 60 years for their light to reach us again.
A phenomenon called gravitational lensing has split the light from these obliterated stars into multiple images, each of which travels a different path through space-time to reach us. As a result, researchers will one day be able to measure the delay between these ghostly images to offer an unprecedented constraint on the expansion rate of the universe — a problem that has long bedeviled scientists, as the universe appears to be expanding at different rates depending on where they look.
Conor Larison, a postdoctoral researcher at the Space Telescope Science Institute, presented the discovery of the two gravitationally lensed supernovas, named SN Ares and SN Athena, at a news conference at the 247th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Phoenix.
Geoff Borg's great photo of the aurora australis as seen from Appila, South Australia.
An impressive aurora australis has been seen in many parts of Australia, reportedly reaching as far north as Hamilton Island in Queensland.
Tuesday night's light show was caused by a severe solar storm hitting the Earth.
People have reported the phenomenon across Tasmania, Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia.
Photographs and videos show shimmering and pulsating pastel-coloured lights, through to bright pinks and purples filling the sky.
Dr Rebecca Allen, co-director of the Space Technology and Industry Institute at Swinburne University of Technology, told ABC News Radio there had been more of the events in recent times.
An intense geomagnetic storm triggered the possibility of northern lights being sighted across Canada and the northern half of the United States on Monday night, along with parts of Europe, including Germany, Switzerland and Ukraine.
'Rare' geostorm showers Earth
The solar storm—which is the largest in over two decades—is the outcome of a mass eruption of charged particles that left the sun on Sunday and are forecasted to arrive Monday and Tuesday, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
A geomagnetic storm is a major disturbance in Earth's magnetic field due to a solar storm. Monday night's storm was "very rare," NOAA said.
The geostorm acquired G4 conditions at 7:38 pm GMT (8:38 pm CET) on Monday, putting it in the second-highest category, the agency added.
Spaceweather, an astronomy platform, reported that the ejection cloud covered the distance from the sun to the earth in nearly 25 hours. Usually, a similar cloud would take three to four days to make the journey.
A gamma-ray burst (GRB) — the most energetic type of explosion in the universe since the Big Bang — is detected once every day, on average. But what happened on July 2, 2025, was highly unusual: NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which has been orbiting Earth since 2008, recorded an unusually long-lived GRB that continued emitting in bursts for more than seven hours.
Astronomers leaped into action, using the world's telescopes to detect the explosion's afterglow and discover where it came from.
The event, called GRB 250702B, was the longest-duration gamma-ray burst ever recorded. Astronomers now think it came from a previously unobserved or rare type of explosion that launched a narrow jet of material in the direction of the solar system, traveling at least 99% the speed of light.
Aircraft maker Airbus recalled thousands of its A320 family aircraft over the weekend for a software fix, in what has been described as one of the largest directives ever for the company. In an odd twist, radiation from the sun appears to play a central role in these events.
The A320 recently surpassed the Boeing 737 to become the most delivered jetliner in history, and the recall caused havoc to varying degrees for airlines all around the world. Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury said that the recalls were "causing significant logistical challenges and delays." Colombian airline Avianca said that the issue had affected more than 70% of its fleet and that it had to close ticket sales for flights through December 8.
The impact of the recall was less severe stateside. Delta and United reported limited impact on its operations while American Airlines said that all 209 of its aircraft that were impacted had been issued the software fix.
Although American air travel was spared from major disruptions, the issue was brought to light after an October incident in which an Airbus A320 operated by JetBlue en route from Cancun, Mexico to Newark, New Jersey suddenly dropped in altitude and had to be rerouted to Tampa, Florida for an emergency landing.
Of all star clusters, the Pleiades are the most famous: Their brightest members, known as the Seven Sisters, are a delight to the naked eye. Look at them tonight, one hour after dark, right above the eastern horizon — but be aware that what you're seeing (and what early humans have painted on cave walls and mysterious Bronze Age disks) is just the tip of the iceberg: By combining data from different observatories, a team of astronomers has managed to identify more than 3,000 stars that formed together with the Pleiades but are now spread across nearly 2,000 light-years. They sprinkle the entire sky, with a notable concentration along the galactic plane.
"We are calling this the Greater Pleiades Complex," says Luke Bouma (Carnegie Institution for Science), who together with team lead Andrew Boyle and Andrew Mann (both University of North Carolina) published their findings in the November 20th Astrophysical Journal: "Most of the members of this structure originated in the same giant stellar nursery," he adds.
Skywatchers were treated to a celestial delight on Wednesday evening, with a severe solar storm making it possible to view the southern lights across large parts of Australia and New Zealand.
A severe solar storm had paved the way for the spectacular display of aurora australis, particularly in Victoria, and as far north as the Blue Mountains where there were reports of the lights over the Three Sisters near Katoomba.
Displays of the northern lights, also known as aurora borealis, were visible in the northern hemisphere overnight on Tuesday.
"Given the strength of this storm, there's a chance people farther north than typically expected in the southern hemisphere might be able to see it," astronomer Dr Laura Driessen, from the Sydney Institute for Astronomy, said on Wednesday, adding it could be visible to people in Sydney and Perth.
"Tasmania and New Zealand should get a decent view," she said.
Wednesday night was "the best chance for people to go outside and try catch a glimpse of the aurora," Dr Sara Webb, an astrophysicist at Swinburne University, said. "It looks like it's going to be very high up the southern coast of Australia, so visible from parts of Victoria and New South Wales."
Comment: Related: Northern lights dazzle US, Europe amid intense solar storm