Assyrian astronomers almost 2,700 years ago were the first people (we know of) to document auroras. The colorful lights, known in the Northern hemisphere as the northern lights, occur because waves of charged particles from the sun hit our planet’s magnetic field.
Normally these are not visible in Assyria, which is too close to the equator. But in the early 600s BCE, a massive solar wave hit the earth. The effects were visible as far south as Mesopotamia. And the awed locals wrote about their experiences: three cuneiform tablets from Nineveh document this unusual event, and the strange “red glow,” “red cloud,” and “red sky” that they saw.
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