2024 Was The Year Of The Sun, From Total Eclipse To Northern Lights

2024 was the year of the sun.

Our hot yellow star basked us in coolness over and over and over. It eclipsed. The sun, at the peak of an 11-year cycle and magnetic field flip, saw repeated storms and flares that sent the aurora borealis’ ethereal curtains of light to places near the southern border that don’t normally see the phenomena.

The Great North American Solar Eclipse on April 8 was the most anticipated solar event of the year, especially for the 32 million people living along a narrow band stretching from Texas to Maine where the moon totally eclipsed the sun, leaving only the spiky corona. With about 19 million people in the path of totality, the 2024 “party of a lifetime,” ahem, eclipsed the 2017 “party of a lifetime.”

Southern Illinois was one of the best places in the country to put on a pair of eclipse glasses to see the moon pass in front of the sun. Crowds of up to 200,000 were expected to converge on the area to view the eclipse at totality, when only the sun’s jagged corona was visible. To the disappointment of people gathered in places near the northern end of the path of totality, clouds moved in and spoiled the show.

Americans chased the moon’s shadow at watch parties, in schools and for citizen science projects, such as those volunteering at local zoos to see if animals behaved differently during the eclipse or thought it was bedtime.

Related: Students Witness Solar Eclipse History

Scientists learned a lot about how animals’ behavior during the 2017 total eclipse — in the wild and in barnyards, as well as in zoos.

Adam Hartstone-Rose, a professor of comparative anatomy at North Carolina State University, and the lead author of a study published in the journal Animals, was skeptical animals would change their behavior much, reasoning at the time that when dark clouds pass overhead, they don’t react.

“To our astonishment, most of the animals did surprising things,” Hartstone-Rose told The Associated Press. A couple of examples: Tortoises became romantic. Giraffes galloped. Apes sang odd notes.

Inevitably, internet searches containing phrases like “my eyes hurt” trended in the days following the eclipse among those who ignored advice to wear certified solar eclipse eyewear. It’s never safe to stare directly at the sun, but that’s the case especially during an eclipse as the moon obscures more and more of the sun’s blinding face.

Related: ‘My Eyes Hurt’ Searches Spike After Solar Eclipse

It will be March 30, 2033, before another total solar eclipse touches the United States, and that’s only on the tip of Alaska. It’ll be Aug. 12, 2044, before the next eclipse sweeps across the lower 48 states, with parts of Montana and North Dakota experiencing totality.

‘Lady Aurora’ Danced Into The Fall

The sun also gave us repeated chances to gaze at one of nature’s most beautiful natural phenomena — the aurora borealis, or northern lights (or, in the Southern Hemisphere, the aurora australis, or southern lights).

The frequent displays of the northern lights were triggered by powerful solar flares and coronal mass ejections as the sun reached solar maximum in its 11-year cycle, a natural cycle it goes through as it transitions between low and high magnetic activity. The sun reached solar maximum this fall.

For only the second time in history on May 10, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a rare geomagnetic storm warning, saying activity on the sun was strong enough that the northern lights

The alert came after two massive sunspots merged, spitting at least two X-class (the largest class) and M-class (the second-largest class) solar flares that sent a mass of supercharged plasma hurtling toward Earth in a coronal mass ejection, or CME. Another sunspot released strong CMEs earlier in the week.

NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center said the sunspot clusters were “magnetically complex and much larger than Earth.”

The aurora forecast was spot on. Americans from one end of the country to the other were enchanted with colorful aurora borealis displays as far south as Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after geomagnetic storming reached levels not seen in two decades.

There were some minor headaches.

Some airplanes were rerouted from areas reporting “voltage irregularities” to avoid any communication disruptions, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on his social media platform that the company’s Starlink satellites were “under a lot of pressure, but holding up so far.”

Farmers trying to get their spring planting done experienced some hiccups. Too.

“While we can appreciate the beauty of the crazy northern lights we had on Friday night and everyone’s gorgeous photos, it wasn’t a good night for us,” a farmer from Vergas, Minnesota, posted on Facebook. “Like many other farmers, the solar storm brought us to a standstill because our GPS units wouldn’t work. There was too much interference. Quite crazy actually!”

By 8 the following morning, farmers were rolling again.

The summer was filled with teases the northern lights might dance. And they did frequently, though viewing in the United States was generally confined to northern-tier states.

The sun got angry again in October, and NOAA again issued the second severe geomagnetic storm watch of the year.

Cellphone cameras captured the aurora exceptionally well due to advanced low-light capabilities and computational photography features like “night mode,” which allow them to pick up subtle light variations in the sky that might not be visible to the naked eye.

As the aurora painted the sky in purple, pink, green and yellow, Americans pointed their phones toward the sky and then plastered their photos on social media and shared them with news outlets, including Patch.

See reader-submitted photos: Northern Lights Dazzle Long Island | Aurora Dances Over New Jersey

Auroral activity naturally slows between the autumn and spring equinoxes. As scientists explained in 1973 with the introduction of a concept known as the Russell-McPherron, auroral activity tends to peak around the March and September equinoxes due to the complicated relationship between the sun and Earth’s magnetic fields.

Now that the sun has reached solar maximum, are nature’s intense sky paintings just a fond memory to leave behind in 2024? Probably not.

Activity this solar cycle has surprised space weather scientists and forecasters. Solar Cycle 25 is the most active on record, and they’re not quite sure why.

“It’s one of the many mysteries to unravel,” space weather forecaster Shawn Dahl explained in a briefing with reporters in October. He and others expect more northern lights displays outside the Arctic range in 2025, and perhaps into 2026.

2024 also saw a string of four consecutive supermoons, starting with a rare blue supermoon in August, and the usual half dozen strong meteor showers, but also the return of the so-called “comet of the century.”

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, officially known as C/2023 A3, was picked up last year by the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System at the Tsuchinshan Chinese Observatory in Purple Mountain, China. Scientists estimate it has been in orbit for about 80,000 years.

That means the last humans to have seen the comet would have been the Neanderthals.