One swallow does not make a summer: 160 years of Richard Carrington's legacy

TL;DR

This paper reviews Richard Carrington's 1859 solar observation and its pivotal role in establishing the connection between solar activity and Earth's magnetic effects, highlighting its significance for space weather research and technological protection.

Contribution

It provides a historical overview of Carrington's observations and discusses their impact on understanding solar-terrestrial magnetic interactions and space weather.

Findings

Carrington's observation linked solar activity to geomagnetic effects.

The discovery laid the foundation for space weather science.

Implications for protecting technological systems are discussed.

Abstract

On 1 September 1859, the British astronomer Richard Carrington observed an anomalous behavior on the Sun. Approximately 17 hours later, magnetic effects of global scales were observed at Earth: aurora borealis and australis in low-latitude regions, and telegraphic equipment failures in Europe and North America. Nowadays, 160 years later, we know that solar-terrestrial connections control the magnetic activity in the geospace and on the ground, and their effects are subject of a discipline named {\it space weather}. The main goal of this modest work is to briefly present to the reader Carrington's observations and the discoveries that led to the connection between solar and terrestrial magnetic phenomena. Implications of this discovery to space weather with emphasis on the protection of technological systems in the geospace and on the ground, and a brief discussion on the future of the discipline, are briefly presented as well.