An 1865 painting by Frederic Edwin Church, possibly inspired by the aurora of 1859.
On September 1, 1859, the sky erupted in color: "alternating great pillars, rolling cumuli shooting streamers, curdled and wisped and fleecy waves—rapidly changing its hue from red to orange, orange to yellow, and yellow to white, and back in the same order to brilliant red," read a New York Times account. This was the aurora seen around the world. Meanwhile, the telegraph operators were perplexed to find that the system suddenly failed. None of the lines worked, and telegraph paper spontaneously caught on fire. The aurora and disconnected telegraphs were both the working of the largest solar storm recorded in history. As charged particles from the sun showered down onto Earth, people in 1859 didn't quite know what to think. Matthew Lasar
over at Ars Technica has collected historical accounts from reporters, telegraph operators, astronomers, and ...
