HONOLULU (KHON2) — The aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, was visible above the islands early Saturday morning, for the first time in over a century.
A few Hawaii residents were able to capture the special moment.
“It was just spectacular, I was so shocked and surprised,” said Brenda Trowbridge, Naalehu resident.
The lights are typically seen in places like Alaska and Northern Canada but stretched down to states like Texas and Arizona this weekend.
Trowbridge said she saw all the photos from across the globe of the spectacular show as she was getting ready for bed on Friday. She said she was bummed because her family had just returned back home to Hawaii from the mainland, where the brilliant colors were visible.
She figured there was no way the lights would appear this far south.
“So it didn’t even cross my mind to stay up and look, so when I woke up at my normal time around 4:30 a.m., and I opened Facebook I saw the Kau Bulletin which said you might be able to see them, and I just ran outside, I couldn’t even see straight yet and was like ‘Oh my gosh! You can see it! It’s pink, and purple and blue and very faint,” Trowbridge explained.
Around the same time, at 4:26 a.m. a Haiku Maui resident took photos of a Starlink satellite unaware he was capturing the aurora too.
Experts say aurora comes from charged sun particles hitting and interacting with the Earth’s atmosphere. And this week, one of the biggest solar flares in decades arrived.
“We had this huge solar flare, I think it was classed as an X 5.8,” explained Roy Gal, associate astronomer at the University of Hawaii Institute of Astronomy. “There is A, B, C, M and X, and X is the biggest and then it’s a scale of 1 to 9, so this was X6 so way near the top of the scale and those flares happen regularly, but the sun is in an active cycle, and this one was aimed towards Earth.”
“In 1859, there was a huge solar storm, where telegraph lines caught on fire on the mainland and aurora was recorded in Hawaii as ‘fire in the sky,’” explained Gal. “Maybe there was another one in the 20s or 30s, so it really is a once-in-a-lifetime event to have a storm so powerful that it’s visible this far south.”
He said there is a chance to see them again on Saturday night.
“It’s ongoing the material from the storm is coming at us in bursts, and depending on when the material gets here and hits the earth; it’s like a cloud of this high energy particle material coming from the sun and so if Earth is in the path of that cloud, we’ll get a walloping which is what happened,” he explained. “So, I heard there’s been more outburst happening so if we have clear skies tonight, we might be able to have another day or so of activity it just depends on how much material and when they interact with Earth.”
As for the colors you might see, Gal said it depends on how strong the storm is. “Those particles go deeper into the atmosphere so people might have seen pictures of pink aurora and that’s from oxygen high up in the atmosphere, the green aurora is oxygen a little lower in the atmosphere; the purple’s and blue’s are rare you only see those in intense storms which we saw photos of across the globe and that’s where the materials push down and hit nitrogen in the atmosphere.”
Some Hawaii residents were on the mainland to witness the incredible show too.
The aurora might not be visible to the naked eye, but the sensors in the camera on your phone can capture the lights quite well.
For iPhone users, the night mode should automatically appear on your phone; it’s a 1/3 moon icon and will have a 1s or 3s next to it. If it doesn’t automatically appear, once you open the camera app, click on the arrow at the top, you’ll see the 1/3 moon at the bottom. Click on it, and drag all the way to the right to 10s to allow for maximum exposure. You’ll want to stay complete still or use a tripod to capture the lights above. If Aurora is above you, you should be able to see the colors in the viewfinder of your phone.
Experts said people need to be away from city pollution, face north, and make sure there are clear skies above to get the best chance of the lights and be patient. The lights can appear at any time throughout the night.