The Most Famous Solar Storm in History

On  September 1, 1859, the effect of an X45-Class Solar Flare was the most ferocious solar storm in recorded history. “The Carrington Event” sparked auroras from Cuba to Hawaii, set fire to telegraph stations, and wrote itself into history books as the Biggest. Solar. Storm. Ever. 

“The Carrington Event was not unique,” says Hisashi Hayakawa of Japan’s Nagoya University, whose recent study of solar storms has uncovered other events of comparable intensity. “While the Carrington Event has long been considered a once‐in‐a‐century catastrophe, historical observations warn us that this may be something that occurs much more frequently.”

SPACEWEATHER.COM NEWS: 12/02/2025

EVEN CARRINGTON WOULD BE IMPRESSED: On Sept. 1, 1859, English astronomer Richard Carrington sketched the most famous sunspot in history. While Carrington was watching an image of the sun projected on a screen, the sunspot produced a blinding X45-class solar flare, followed two days later by a planet-wide geomagnetic storm. We call it the “Carrington Event.”

How does today’s giant sunspot compare to Carrington’s? Here is the answer:

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