  The Carrington event is considered to be one of the most extreme space
weather events in observational history within a series of magnetic storms
caused by extreme interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) from a large
and complex active region (AR) emerged on the solar disk. In this article, we
study the temporal and spatial evolutions of the source sunspot active region
and visual aurorae, and compare this storm with other extreme space weather
events on the basis of their spatial evolution. Sunspot drawings by Schwabe,
Secchi, and Carrington describe the position and morphology of the source AR at
that time. Visual auroral reports from the Russian Empire, Iberia, Ireland,
Oceania, and Japan fill the spatial gap of auroral visibility and revise the
time series of auroral visibility in mid to low magnetic latitudes (MLATs). The
reconstructed time series is compared with magnetic measurements and shows the
correspondence between low to mid latitude aurorae and the phase of magnetic
storms. The spatial evolution of the auroral oval is compared with those of
other extreme space weather events in 1872, 1909, 1921, and 1989 as well as
their storm intensity, and contextualizes the Carrington event, as one of the
most extreme space weather events, but likely not unique.
