On the night between Friday 10th and Saturday 11th May the Italian skies took on “unusual” colours, giving a spatial spectacle from North to South. From pink to purple, up to intense red: all thanks to the aurora. The rare phenomenon was observed with the naked eye in several regions, with users' shots filling social media. The rare phenomenon was perfectly visible throughout the North and central areas, with spectacular sightings also in Sardinia, Abruzzo, Molise, Basilicata, Sicily and Puglia. According to experts, the auroral activity was generated by a geomagnetic storm, i.e. a disturbance of the Earth's magnetosphere caused by solar activity. The storm was initially classified as class G4, i.e. “severe”, but as the hours passed the level went to G5, i.e. “extreme”.
The aurora show over Italy: the video
The astrophysicist Gianluca Masi, scientific curator of the Planetarium and astronomical museum of Rome and head of the Virtual Telescope Project, shared the footage recorded between 10 and 11 May: an extraordinary 4K video that covers the entire night, from dawn to dusk, showing all phases of the aurora. In the images you can in fact notice the development of the phenomenon and the evolution of its activity, with different “waves” and spectacular variations in structure and color.
The video, visible on YouTube, was created with an “all-sky” camera, available at the Virtual Telescope Project station in Manciano (Grosseto), in the Montauto area, under the most starry sky in peninsular Italy. This is a fundamental characteristic that allowed the recording of the event in all its nuances.