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Posted by WorldPeas 1/19/2026

Level S4 solar radiation event(www.swpc.noaa.gov)
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/goes-proton-flux
628 points | 198 commentspage 3
juliend2 1/20/2026|
Might be a coincidence but for the first time last night, my son's sleep projector[0] didn't stop after 1h like it does normally.

I guess this could be related to it? (we are in Montreal)

I doubt these toys are protected from those kinds of events.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-Settle-Sleep-Projection-...

ComputerGuru 1/19/2026||
Do you need long exposure to make it visible with a camera? How does that work in the presence of light pollution?
thebruce87m 1/19/2026||
Tonight I could see the colours without the camera but it definitely stands out more with the long exposure of the camera.

Even with lights in the direct line of the shot you you can get good results - presumably the phone is doing HDR to achieve this.

ComputerGuru 1/21/2026||
I tried it last night (generally cloudless sky). With the naked eye it just looked like light pollution. With long exposure it looked like a weirdly lit picture. In neither case did I see any hint of green or red.

I’m not in the city, but you’d have to actually be two states away to escape its light (literally not figuratively, according to dark sky maps).

:(

Macha 1/19/2026||
Local light pollution normally makes it hard to see with anything short of long exposure, but today it was naked eye visible and regular photos also captured it.
lgats 1/20/2026||
https://www.ieso.ca/Sector-Participants/RSS-Feeds/Day-0-Advi...

https://www.misoenergy.org/markets-and-operations/notificati...

https://www.ercot.com/services/comm/mkt_notices/notices

https://emergencyprocedures.pjm.com/ep/pages/dashboard.jsf

trashface 1/20/2026||
Scott Manley just did a video on radiation shielding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJcbevbBzsc

Based on that, I presume the astronauts on the ISS will need to take cover due to this event

nbf_1995 1/20/2026||
Title says "S4" solar radiation event, but the linked page says "G4" geomagnetic storm
cess11 1/20/2026||
I live somewhat close to the arctic circle and the aurora has been exceptional lately. One recent evening it looked like there was a massive city behind the cloud cover, and a few nights before when the sky was clear I watched enormous green flames for hours.
internet_points 1/20/2026|
Aha, you probably witnessed a glimpse of Cittàgazze. You can capture it in photograms with a special emulsion: https://hisdarkmaterials.fandom.com/wiki/Aurora?file=Citt%C3...
mrbluecoat 1/20/2026||
Verizon will probably retroactively blame their outage on it.
johng 1/20/2026||
These solar events can cause loss of communication with satellites making avoidance maneuvers hard or impossible. This article just came out recently and is definitely scary: https://www.universetoday.com/articles/28-days-to-disaster-w...
burnt-resistor 1/20/2026||
Up to G-5 possibly. Cell phone visible in dark areas throughout most of CONUS.

It was mentioned that air travel ionizing radiation exposure increases during geomagnetic storms. I'd consider pausing travel for a couple of days to not be a guinea pig because there's not enough data to consider it safe. If anyone absolutely must fly tonight, it'd be interesting if they were to take a high sensitivity dosimeter to see what happens.

garbagewoman 1/20/2026|
Not sure how to deal with this kind of wildly unbalanced risk assessment
wafflemaker 1/20/2026|
What are the best apps to get notified when there's a geomagnetic storm /chances to see Aurora? Preferably not only for USA.
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