'Extreme' solar storm: Rare red-coloured auroral arc graces Ladakh's skies

A crimson glow lit up the dark sky in parts of Ladakh in a rare stable auroral red arc event at the Hanle Dark Sky Reserve in the high Himalayas due to the strong solar magnetic storms launched towards Earth. The solar storms or coronal mass ejections are from the AR13664 region of the sun that has produced several high energy solar flares, some of which are travelling towards Earth at a speed of 800 km/s, scientists at the Centre of Excellence in Space Sciences in India (CESSI), Kolkata, said. Spectacular auroras or northern lights lit up the skies in the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere as skywatchers from Austria, Germany, Slovakia, Switzerland, Denmark and Poland shared pictures and short videos of the dancing lights on social media. In Ladakh, astronomers at the Hanle Dark Sky Reserve saw a red glow on the northwest horizon in the sky from about 1 am on Saturday that continued till early dawn. "We were fortunate to witness Aurora activities on our all-sky camera dur