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| BGS Magnetogram image ID 188878 |
The event was responsible for a great auroral storm. The following is an eyewitness account from a woman on Sullivan's Island, Carolina and reported in the Charleston Mercury:
“The eastern sky appeared of a blood red color. It seemed brightest exactly in the east, as though the full moon, or rather the sun, were about to rise. It extended almost to the zenith. The whole island was illuminated. The sea reflected the phenomenon, and no one could look at it without thinking of the passage in the Bible which says, ‘the sea was turned to blood.’ The shells on the beach, reflecting light, resembled coals of fire.”
BGS has scanned its full collection of 300,000 magnetograms. Full resolution images can be found at http://www.bgs.ac.uk/data/magnetograms/
Bob McIntosh
