The morning of 1 September 1859 was lovely and sunny in the south of England. That was good news for amateur astronomer Richard Carrington, who had a particular fondness for observing the sun. That day, he went up to his private observatory, pointed his telescope at the sun, and began to sketch the sunspots. What he saw next got him very excited indeed.
"Two patches of intensely bright and white light broke out" of the sun, wrote Carrington, and hurled invisible particles towards the earth. It didn't take long for the particles to smash into our magnetic field and light up the skies. That night, bright red and green auroras could be seen as far south as Cuba.
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