From breathtaking images to bright banter — South Africans wade in on solar storm sightings

From breathtaking photographs of coloured skies to spoof images of skies emblazoned with highlighter pen scribbles, South Africans at home and spread across the world have been joining global responses to the historic solar storm that impacted Earth this weekend. 

According to the South African National Space Agency (Sansa), the storm happened throughout the night on Friday and continued into Saturday. 

Sansa’s Space Weather Centre issued several G4 warnings and, for the first time since 2003, one G5 warning was issued. These are readings on the geomagnetic storm scale that indicates the severity of geomagnetic storms, rated from 1 to 5, with 1 a minor event and 5 an extreme event. 

Agency spokesperson Vaneshree Maharaj said a solar storm occurs when charged particles from the sun interact with the Earth’s magnetic field. The impact is generally only on technological systems, and is most clearly seen in the form of the northern and southern lights. 

“We track these things constantly and as soon as the activity starts escalating we put out warnings. We started to see it happening and growing on Thursday. We were pro-active and started issuing alerts, particularly to stakeholders who would be impacted by disruptions to technology. They were made aware and were able to put mitigating strategies in place,” Maharaj told TimesLIVE Premium. 

“We haven’t seen anything like this since about 2003. The beautiful spectacles you see happen when protons, neutrons and electrons in the air all react differently and glow strange colours,” she said, explaining why some parts of the planet saw different colours in the sky. 

“Normally it’s confined to the North and South poles, but because this one was so substantial people saw it spreading out towards the middle of the planet. Had the G5 storm grown worse or continued for longer I think we might have been able to see something in Gauteng.” 

While the lights were witnessed and captured in many places across the globe, many people missed out, particularly those in big cities such as London. This, said Maharaj, is because light pollution tends to cancel out the brightness of the coloured lights. 

This weekend saw several reports of the southern lights, Aurora Australis, featuring as a reddish glow over the Cape and up to Namibia. Lights in the north, Aurora Borealis, were witnessed across the northern hemisphere.

 “There were also some very beautiful sightings in Australia,” said Maharaj. 

South Africans shared photographs online of red and purple coloured skies. 

An image of glowing red skies above Cape Town was taken by Steven Shannon, who wrote: “First I thought there was a fire somewhere behind the mountain, then I thought there was something wrong with the popcorn I had earlier, then I thought aliens. I was so fortunate to have seen this red sky aurora.” 

"Simply mind-blowing," photographer Kyle Goetsch posted from Cape Town.

"A special moment I’ll never forget."

One of the spoof images on social media for those who missed out: