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In 1859, an English scientist named Richard Carrington spent much of his time watching

the Sun's activity.

And in September of that year, he noticed something next to a large sun spot, one of those

dark areas on the Sun's surface.

He saw a really big flash and he wasn't sure what happened.

Dr. Samaya Fareed is a solar physicist at Yale University.

He thought there was some kind of accident with the instrument or something like that.

Less than a day later, on the other side of the world, a group of gold miners in the

Rockies woke up to what they thought was the Sunrise.

Come out the Suns and people have started going about the date and they realize,

the Sun is not rising, this is actually just an error.

They were seeing the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights.

This Aurora was so huge, it was witnessed in places where it's rarely seen, like Cuba.

This event even caused strong Southern Lights in places like Chile and Colombia.

And it was doing weird things to the technology of the era.

Telegraph machines sparked shocking operators, catching the telegraph paper on fire,

and some of the machines stopped working completely.

And in one case, an unplugged telegraph machine continued operating,

powered by a rogue current in the atmosphere.

What Richard Carrington observed that day taught us a lot about the Sun and space weather.

People knew about the roar, but they didn't know it was related to the Sun.

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