The Carrington Effect

For aurora watchers, it can be a tightrope walk between enjoying the moment and waiting for the next "Big One."

Like many young men, Karl Wallenda went into the family business. The family business in this case however, was the “Flying Wallendas” a cadre of circus performers and high-wire walkers that for generations plied their trade without safety nets, sometimes with tragic consequences. Despite those consequences, those shining moments on the wire were all that Karl Wallenda could think of. They obsessed him. “Life is on the wire,” he once said. “The rest is only waiting.”

(Photograph by Atlanta Journal Constitution)

I am thinking of Karl Wallenda and his famous quote as I lie flat on my back aboard the Little Dipper drifting in the dark among the Apostle Islands hoping for northern lights. The aurora forecasts all point to a potential display tonight. The numbers look good. The aurora social media groups are buzzing with excitement and anticipation with talk of high KP values and negative BZ numbers and solar wind speeds. But the sky itself out here in the Apostle Islands is blank. No northern lights, yet. And so I wait.

Those social media groups rarely talk about the waiting. But in fact most truthful aurora watchers will tell you, when they are honest, that for every hour they have spent under dazzling displays of northern lights, there have been many, many more hours spent simply waiting. No one wants to talk about that. For a Wallenda-like aurora watcher, the lights are life. The rest is only waiting, and what they are waiting for is the big one.

Among sky watchers, all aurora displays are measured against the “Big One,” known as the Carrington Event. It happened in September of 1859, one of the strongest and most intense solar storms ever recorded. Telegraph machines all over the world stopped working, some literally bursting into flames. Electrical devices seemingly took on a mind of their own arcing sometimes even when unplugged. Compasses went wild. No one was really sure of the cause until amateur astronomer Richard Carrington tied the events to his observations of a series of immense solar flares in the days preceding the event that would become known as the first scientifically reported mass coronal ejection in history.

(Richard Carrington 1826-1875 Royal Astronomy Association archives)

Along with the electrical anomalies, the skies went wild. Vivid displays of aurora were reported from pole to pole including southern Mexico, Cuba, Hawaii, and even in Columbia, some so bright that people mistook them for sunshine. In the Rocky Mountains, or so the story goes, gold miners were awaked by the brightness of the sky and rose to begin making breakfast and prepare for the day’s work. In other places some claimed the lights were so bright that you could read a newspaper outside without a lamp.

The Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser called the resulting display of aurora “magnificent” and its brightness “greater than that of the moon at its full but had an indescribable softness and delicacy that seemed to envelop everything upon which it rested.” An Australian gold miner named C.F. Herbert waxed even more philosophically saying about the display in an interview “The rationalist and pantheist saw nature in her most exquisite robes, recognizing, the divine immanence, immutable law, cause, and effect. The superstitious and the fanatical had dire forebodings, and through it a foreshadowing of Armageddon and final dissolution.”

In their own way, nearly every aurora chaser is waiting for another Carrington Event, hoping the sky will light up with color and movement as if the heavens themselves are ablaze with glory. Sometimes however, a desire for the next “Big One” can lead some to dismiss anything lesser. Call it the Carrington Effect, the idea that once a level of aurora display is witnessed that makes you weak in the knees, everything else falls short and leaves you at least a little disappointed. You can see it play out in the social media groups the morning after any big auroral event. It comes in the form of comments such as “I’ve seen better” or “that was not as good as …” such and such a date. Perhaps it is human nature to be blunted by extremes until we become closed off to lesser beauties. If so, that is a high price to pay.

We may or may not live to see another Carrington Event but that should not diminish our enjoyment of what we do experience. Life cannot be a series of measuring sticks that too often don’t measure up. To witness even a sparkle of northern lights glimmering faintly in the dark sky should be enough to stir our soul, if we let it.

And so as I wait, drifting quietly aboard the Little Dipper in the dark, I vow not to fall prey to the Carrington Effect, to be satisfied with whatever I see, no matter how faint - another Carrington Event or just a single glimmer that vanishes almost before I can look. In that way, the rest is not just “waiting,” there is life and beauty above us every moment, and the wait is always worth it as we walk the tightrope between expectations and the reality of whatever comes next.

— Jeff Rennicke (all photography by the author unless otherwise noted).

As always, drop me a line and let me know your thoughts by clicking the button below: