No Arabic abstract
The study of historical great geomagnetic storms is crucial for assessing the possible risks to the technological infrastructure of a modern society, caused by extreme space-weather events. The normal benchmark has been the great geomagnetic storm of September 1859, the so-called Carrington Event. However, there are numerous records of another great geomagnetic storm in February 1872. This storm, about 12 years after the Carrington Event, resulted in comparable magnetic disturbances and auroral displays over large areas of the Earth. We have revisited this great geomagnetic storm in terms of the auroral and sunspot records in the historical documents from East Asia. In particular, we have surveyed the auroral records from East Asia and estimated the equatorward boundary of the auroral oval to be near 24.3 deg invariant latitude (ILAT), on the basis that the aurora was seen near the zenith at Shanghai (20 deg magnetic latitude, MLAT). These results confirm that this geomagnetic storm of February 1872 was as extreme as the Carrington Event, at least in terms of the equatorward motion of the auroral oval. Indeed, our results support the interpretation of the simultaneous auroral observations made at Bombay (10 deg MLAT). The East Asian auroral records have indicated extreme brightness, suggesting unusual precipitation of high-intensity, low-energy electrons during this geomagnetic storm. We have compared the duration of the East Asian auroral displays with magnetic observations in Bombay and found that the auroral displays occurred in the initial phase, main phase, and early recovery phase of the magnetic storm.
Given the infrequency of extreme geomagnetic storms, it is significant to note the concentration of three extreme geomagnetic storms in 1941, whose intensities ranked fourth, twelfth, and fifth within the aa index between 1868-2010. Among them, the geomagnetic storm on 1 March 1941 was so intense that three of the four Dst station magnetograms went off scale. Herein, we reconstruct its time series and measure the storm intensity with an alternative Dst estimate (Dst*). The source solar eruption at 09:29 - 09:38 GMT on 28 February was located at RGO AR 13814 and its significant intensity is confirmed by large magnetic crochets of 35 nT measured at Abinger. This solar eruption most likely released a fast interplanetary coronal mass ejection with estimated speed 2260 km/s. After its impact at 03:57 - 03:59 GMT on 1 March, an extreme magnetic storm was recorded worldwide. Comparative analyses on the contemporary magnetograms show the storm peak intensity of minimum Dst* < -464 nT at 16 GMT, comparable to the most and the second most extreme magnetic storms within the standard Dst index since 1957. This storm triggered significant low-latitude aurorae in the East Asian sector and their equatorward boundary has been reconstructed as 38.5{deg} in invariant latitude. This result agrees with British magnetograms which indicate auroral oval moving above Abinger at 53.0{deg} in magnetic latitude. The storm amplitude was even more enhanced in equatorial stations and consequently casts caveats on their usage for measurements of the storm intensity in Dst estimates.
Newly discovered descriptions about the great aurora observed in March 1582 are presented in this work. These records were made by Portuguese observers from Lisbon. Both records described the aurora like a great fire in the northern part of the sky. It was observed during three consecutive nights, according to one of the sources. Thus, we present a discussion of these auroral records in order to complement other works that studied the aurora sighted in March 1582.
This section shows an overview of a recent development of the studies on great space weather events in history. Its discussion starts from the Carrington event and compare its intensity with the extreme storms within the coverage of the regular magnetic measurements. Extending its analyses back beyond their onset, this section shows several case studies of extreme storms with sunspot records in the telescopic observations and candidate auroral records in historical records. Before the onset of telescopic observations, this section shows the chronological coverages of the records of unaided-eye sunspot and candidate aurorae and several case studies on their basis.
The Carrington storm (September 1/2, 1859) is one of the largest magnetic storms ever observed and it has caused global auroral displays in low-latitude areas, together with a series of multiple magnetic storms during August 28 and September 4, 1859. In this study, we revisit contemporary auroral observation records to extract information on their elevation angle, color, and direction to investigate this stormy interval in detail. We first examine their equatorward boundary of auroral emission with multiple colors based on descriptions of elevation angle and color. We find that their locations were 36.5 deg ILAT on August 28/29 and 32.7 deg ILAT on September 1/2, suggesting that trapped electrons moved to, at least, L~1.55 and L~1.41, respectively. The equatorward boundary of purely red emission was likely located at 30.8 deg ILAT on September 1/2. If purely red emission was a stable auroral red arc, it would suggest that trapped protons moved to, at least, L~1.36. This reconstruction with observed auroral emission regions provides conservative estimations of magnetic storm intensities. We compare the auroral records with magnetic observations. We confirm that multiple magnetic storms occurred during this stormy interval, and that the equatorward expansion of the auroral oval is consistent with the timing of magnetic disturbances. It is possible that the August 28/29 interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) cleared out the interplanetary medium, making the ICMEs for the Carrington storm on September 1/2 more geoeffective.
Nuclear astrophysics is an interdisciplinary research field of nuclear physics and astrophysics, seeking for the answer to a question, how to understand the evolution of the Universe with the nuclear processes which we learn. We review the research activities of nuclear astrophysics in east and southeast Asia which includes astronomy, experimental and theoretical nuclear physics and astrophysics. Several hot topics such as the Li problems, critical nuclear reactions and properties in stars, properties of dense matter, r-process nucleosynthesis and $ u$-process nucleosynthesis are chosen and discussed in further details. Some future Asian facilities, together with physics perspectives, are introduced.