Stunning aurora displays lit up large parts of the world this week as one of the strongest geomagnetic storms in more than two decades hit the Rarth. The colourful lights were seen from parts of Europe, Australia, the US and Canada. Usually witnessed in high-latitude regions, these lights form due to the interaction between charged particles in solar winds and the Earth’s magnetosphere.
While the sightings were also reported in Ladakh, Indians in other parts of the country took to social media to lament about missing the phenomenon. But not for long, and memes taking a dig at India's own versions of the aurora soon took over.
A user said most rental flats in Delhi-NCR come with their own aurora borealis, referring to colourful neon lights some people put up in their homes.
Another shared a picture of bumper-to-bumper Mumbai traffic at night, and called it "Arora boravali".
Two users just used digital crayons to joke about how they were able to see aurora borealis from Delhi.
A user from Thane employed the same trick.
The solar storms behind the widespread aurora displays are caused by Coronal Mass Ejections (CME), an expulsion of magnetic particles and plasma from the Sun’s atmosphere. A report by PTI quoted scientists at the Centre of Excellence in Space Sciences in India (CESSI), Kolkata, as saying that the solar storms are from the AR13664 region of the Sun that has produced several high-energy solar flares. They were travelling towards Earth at a speed of 800 km.
The stunning display of lights in the sky is known as Aurora Borealis when seen in the Northern Hemisphere, and Aurora Australis in the South.
According to reports, the Northern Lights were also observed in Ladakh. According to a report in PTI, astronomers saw a rare stable auroral red arc event at the Hanle Dark Sky Reserve in the high Himalayas. The red glow on the northwest horizon lasted from about 1 am on May 11 till early dawn.