More flares are in the offing. There are now three sunspot groups on the Earthside of the sun capable of strong eruptions: AR1875, AR1877 and AR1882. NOAA forecasters estimate a 55% chance of M-flares and a 10% chance of X-flares during the next 24 hours. www.spaceweather.com
Solar activity is intensifying. New sunspot AR1882, which rotated over the sun's eastern limb earlier today, promptly unleashed an X1-class solar flare, adding to a days-long fusillade of flares already underway from sunspots AR1875 and AR1877. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded a bright flash of extreme UV radiation from the X1 flare, which peaked at 08:01 UT on Oct. 25th: There may be more to this flare than meets the eye. Watch this movie of the sun's entire disk. The X1-flare was bracketed by two erupting magnetic filaments, each located hundreds of thousands of kilometers from AR1882. In other words, the X1 flare might have been just one piece of an interconnected global eruption.
More flares are in the offing. There are now three sunspot groups on the Earthside of the sun capable of strong eruptions: AR1875, AR1877 and AR1882. NOAA forecasters estimate a 55% chance of M-flares and a 10% chance of X-flares during the next 24 hours. www.spaceweather.com
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Solar activity is high. On October 24th at 00:30 UT, Earth-facing sunspot AR1877 erupted, producing a powerful M9-class solar flare. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the blast: Update #1: The eruption hurled a faint CME into space and it appears to be heading toward Earth. The arrival time is not yet known.
Update #2: NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory has released a full-disk movie of the explosion. Play it. More flares are in the offing. Two large sunspots, AR1875 and AR1877, have 'beta-gamma-delta' magnetic fields that harbor energy for strong eruptions. NOAA forecasters estimate a 40% chance of M-flares and a 5% chance of X-flares during the next 24 hours. www.spaceweather.com Earth's magnetic field is about to receive a glancing blow from three CMEs observed leaving the Sun between Oct. 20th and 22nd. Forecast models suggest that the three clouds merged en route to Earth, and their combined impact could trigger a mild polar geomagnetic storm on Oct. 25. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.
www.spaceweather.com Two large sunspot groups, AR1875 and AR1877,have emerged over the sun's eastern limb and they are turning toward Earth. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this three-day movie of their approach: AR1877 is large, and AR1875 is rapidly growing to match it. Both sunspot groups have 'beta-gamma' magnetic fields that harbor energy for M-class solar flares. So far, however, neither one is actively flaring. Perhaps this is the calm before the storm. NOAA forecasters estimate a 25% chance of M-flares in the next 24 hours. www.spaceweather.com
October 13th began with an explosion on the sun. At 00:43 UT, sunspot AR1865 erupted, producing an M1-class solar flare and an Earth-directed CME. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the explosion's flash of extreme UV radiation: Soon after the flare, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory recorded a faint CME emerging from the blast site. Based on the approximate speed of the expanding cloud, between 600 km/s and 800 km/s, it will probably reach Earth on Oct. 15-16. Polar geomagnetic storms are possible when the CME arrives. www.spaceweather.com
Published on 3 Oct 2013
TODAY's New LINKS: IRIS: http://iris.lmsal.com HiRISE sees ISON: http://www.uahirise.org/releases/ison... ISON Gallery: http://spaceweather.com/gallery/ison_... RED AURORAS: On October 2nd, a CME hit Earth's magnetic field, sparking a G2-class geomagnetic storm. Sky watchers on both ends of the Earth saw auroras; many of the lights were rare shades of red. Minoru Yoneto photographed this example from Queenstown, New Zealand: "This is how the sky looked 11 hours after the CME impact," says Yoneto, who used a Canon EOS 6D digital camera to record the reds. Auroras are usually green, and sometimes purple, but seldom do sky watchers see this much red. Red auroras occur some 300 to 500 km above Earth's surface and are not yet fully understood. Some researchers believe the red lights are linked to a large influx of electrons. When low-energy electrons recombine with oxygen ions in the upper atmosphere, red photons are emitted. At present, space weather forecasters cannot predict when this will occur. During the storm, even more red auroras were observed over the United States in places like Kansas, Ohio, and Oklahoma. Browse the gallery for examples. Realtime Aurora Photo Gallery THE INSTIGATING CME: The CME that hit Earth's magnetic field left the sun on Sept. 30th, propelled by an erupting magnetic filament. SOHO photographed the CME at the start of its journey, racing away from the sun at 2 million mph (900 km/s): The CME was impressive, but the underlying explosion was even more so. One movie [from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the self-destructing filament in the context of the whole sun. Another movie zooms in for a close-up. It catches the filament ripping through the sun's atmosphere and leaving behind a beautiful "canyon of fire."
NOAA forecasters working through the government shutdown estimated an almost-even 45% chance of polar geomagnetic storms when the CME arrived. The CME justified those relatively high odds, sparking a G2-class geomagnetic storm around the poles. Published on 30 Sep 2013 by 'Suspicious Observers'
http://www.suspicious0bservers.org/pr... Counterstrike Ch1 Posted : Counterstrike Ch2 Due November 1 Starwater Ch1 Posted : Starwater Ch2 Due October 1 They want to blame you : http://youtu.be/l-RvUedfKpk Evening News: 96% Daily Upload Rate : Private Forum: Online, Troll-Free : Fly on the Wall: 13 hrs total Original music by NEMES1S : http://www.suspicious0bservers.org/shop/ : http://www.soundclick.com/nemes1s Background: How to Watch the Sun: Spaceweather 101 - http://youtu.be/ld5ecZuHECA Ice Age Soon? http://youtu.be/UuYTcnN7TQk An Unlikely but Relevant Risk - The Solar Killshot: http://youtu.be/X0KJ_dxp170 REPEAT LINKS: WORLD WEATHER: NDBC Buoys: http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/ Tropical Storms: http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/ HurricaneZone Satellite Images: http://www.hurricanezone.net/westpaci... Weather Channel: http://www.weather.com/ NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory: http://www.nnvl.noaa.gov/Default.php Pressure Maps: http://www.woweather.com/cgi-bin/expe... Satellite Maps: http://www.woweather.com/cgi-app/sate... Forecast Maps: http://www.woweather.com/weather/maps... EL DORADO WORLD WEATHER MAP: http://www.eldoradocountyweather.com/... TORCON: http://www.weather.com/news/tornado-t... [Tornado Forecast for the day] HURRICANE TRACKER: http://www.weather.com/weather/hurric... US WEATHER: Precipitation Totals: http://www.cocorahs.org/ViewData/List... GOES Satellites: http://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov/goes/ THE WINDMAP: http://hint.fm/wind/ Severe Weather Threats: http://www.weather.com/news/weather-s... Canada Weather Office Satellite Composites: http://www.weatheroffice.gc.ca/satell... Temperature Delta: http://www.intellicast.com/National/T... Records/Extremes: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/rec... SPACEWEATHER: Spaceweather: http://spaceweather.com SOHO Solar Wind: http://umtof.umd.edu/pm/ HAARP Data Meters: http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/dat... Planetary Orbital Diagram - Ceres1 JPL: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr... SDO: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/ Helioviewer: http://www.helioviewer.org/ SOHO: http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-b... Stereo: http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/i... SOLARIMG: http://solarimg.org/artis/ iSWA: http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov/iswa/iSWA.html NASA ENLIL SPIRAL: http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov:8080/IswaSy... NOAA ENLIL SPIRAL: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/wsa-enlil/ GOES Xray: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sxi/goes15/i... Gamma Ray Bursts: http://grb.sonoma.edu/ BARTOL Cosmic Rays: http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu//spac... ISWA: http://iswa.ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov:8080/I... NOAA Sunspot Classifications: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/lates... GONG: http://gong2.nso.edu/dailyimages/ GONG Magnetic Maps: http://gong.nso.edu/data/magmap/ondem... MISC Links: JAPAN Radiation Map: http://jciv.iidj.net/map/ RADIATION Network: http://radiationnetwork.com/ LISS: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/monitoring... QUAKES LIST FULL: http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/s... RSOE: http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php [That cool alert map I use] Moon: http://www.fourmilab.ch/earthview/pac... QUIET SUNSPOTS, ACTIVE FILAMENT: None of the sunspots on the Earthside of the sun is actively flaring. Technically, this means solar activity is "low." Nevertheless, a large magnetic filament in the sun's southern hemisphere erupted during the early hours of August 29th: movie. The CME it hurled into space might have an Earth-directed component. Stay tuned for updates. MAJOR FIREBALL EVENT: Bill Cooke of NASA Meteoroid Environment Office reports that a major fireball event occurred over the southeastern USA on August 28th. The explosion was brighter than the Moon and it might have scattered meteorites on the ground. Watch the movie (on www.spaceweather.com), then read Cooke's full report below: "On August 28 at 07:27 UTC (2:27 AM local time in Alabama), all six NASA all-sky cameras in the southeast picked up a very bright fireball," he says. "Its peak magnitude was approximately -11, or six times brighter than the Last Quarter Moon. This may very well be the brightest event our network has observed in 5 years of operation."
"The cameras were completely saturated, necessitating a manual solution of the fireball's trajectory and orbit," he adds. Initial results indicate that the meteoroid massed 45 kg (roughly 0.3 to 0.4 meters in diameter) and hit the top of Earth's atmosphere traveling 23.7 km/s (53,000 mph). Cooke is currently examining doppler radar records and other data to determine where the fall zone is located. www.spaceweather.com ANOTHER CME IS ON THE WAY: As Earth passes through the wake of one CME, which did little to stir geomagnetic activity on Aug. 20th, another CME is on the way. NOAA forecasters expect a coronal mass ejection hurled into space yesterday by an erupting magnetic filament to deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field on Aug. 23rd. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras. SUNDIVING COMET AND FULL-HALO CME: A small comet plunged into the sun on August 20th. Just before it arrived, the sun expelled a magnificent full-halo CME. Click here to view a movie from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO): In the final frames of the movie, the comet can be seen furiously vaporizing. Indeed, those were the comet's final frames. It did not emerge again from its flyby of the hot sun. "With a diameter of perhaps a few tens of meters, this comet was clearly far too small to survive the intense bombardment of solar radiation," comments Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab, who studies sungrazing comets.
The CME (coronal mass ejection) came from an explosion on the farside of the sun. Although the CME and the comet appear to intersect, there was probably no interaction between the two. The comet is in the foreground and the farside CME is behind it. Occasionally, readers ask if sundiving comets can trigger solar explosions. There's no known mechanism for comets to spark solar flares. Comets are thought to be too small and fragile to destabilize the sun's magnetic field. Plus, this comet was still millions of kilometers from the sun when the explosion unfolded. The comet, R.I.P., was a member of the Kreutz family. Kreutz sungrazers are fragments from the breakup of a single giant comet many centuries ago. They get their name from 19th century German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, who studied them in detail. Several Kreutz fragments pass by the sun and disintegrate every day. Most, measuring less than a few meters across, are too small to see, but occasionally a bigger fragment like this one attracts attention. www.spaceweather.com
"This was my first Perseid of the season," he says. "During the 35 minutes I watched, I saw 4 more. Can't wait for the maximum..."
The maximum is coming. Meteor rates should remain low for the next week as Earth penetrates the sparse outskirts of the debris stream, then skyrocket to ~100 meteors per hour as the calendar turns to the second week of August. Forecasters expect maximum Perseid activity on the nights of August 12-13. [meteor radar] [NASA: Perseid fireballs]. www.spaceweather.com SPACE WEATHER FACT CHECK: Many readers are asking about a report in the Washington Examiner, which states that a Carrington-class solar storm narrowly missed Earth two weeks ago. There was no Carrington-class solar storm two weeks ago. On the contrary, solar activity was low throughout the month of July. The report is erroneous. The possibility of such a storm is, however, worth thinking about: A modern Carrington event would cause significant damage to our high-tech society. FIRST PERSEIDS OF 2013: Earth is entering a broad stream of debris from comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, source of the annual Perseid meteor shower. Although the shower won't peak until August 12-13, when Earth hits the densest part of the stream, the first Perseids are already arriving. "Despite poor weather over our network of meteor cameras, we detected three Perseid fireballs on July 30-31," reports Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. He made this plot showing the orbits of the meteoroids: In the diagram, the green lines trace the orbits of Perseid meteoroids. All three intersect Earth (the blue dot). The orbit of the parent comet is color-coded purple. An inset shows one of the fireballs shining almost as brightly as the Moon: video. The shower is just getting started. Rates should remain low for the next week as Earth penetrates the sparse outskirts of the debris stream, then skyrocket to ~100 meteors per hour as the calendar turns to the second week of August. Stay tuned for more fireballs. [meteor radar] [NASA: Perseid fireballs]. CORONAL HOLE: Magnetic fields in the sun's northern hemisphere have opened up, forming a coronal hole. This UV image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the opening as a dark gap in the sun's upper atmosphere: Coronal holes are places in the sun's atmosphere where the magnetic field bends back and allows the solar wind to escape. A stream of solar wind flowing from this particular coronal hole will reach Earth on August 3-4. Its impact could spark a minor geomagnetic storm, so high-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.
Another space weather fact check: News sources such as space.com and Fox News recently reported a "giant hole in the sun." Fact: The "giant hole" was a fairly run-of-the-mill coronal hole, only slightly larger than usual. In defense of the journalists, their stories were prompted by a NASA report. The report was accurate, but it showed a high-contrast image of the sun, which made the coronal hole look bigger and deeper than it actually was. An SDO image taken at approximately the same time (July 18) shows the true scale of the hole. www.spaceweather.com Solar Cycle 24 is shaping up to be the weakest solar cycle in more than 50 years. In 2009, a panel of forecasters led by NOAA and NASA predicted a below-average peak. Now that Solar Max has arrived, however, it is even weaker than they expected. Look inside the yellow circle to see the shortfall: It may be premature to declare Solar Cycle 24 underwhelming. Solar physicist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center thinks Solar Cycle 24 is double peaked--and the second peak is yet to come. Also, weak solar cycles have been known to produce very strong flares. The strongest solar storm in recorded history, the Carrington Event of 1859, occurred during a relatively weak solar cycle like this one. Stay tuned for flares? Maybe, but not this week. Solar activity remains very low. www.spaceweather.com
Opening up like a zipper almost a million kilometers long, a vast coronal hole has appeared in the sun's northern hemisphere. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory took this picture of the UV-dark chasm on July 18th: Coronal holes are places in the sun's upper atmosphere where the magnetic field opens up and allows solar wind to escape. A broad stream of solar wind flowing from this particular coronal hole should reach Earth on July 19-20.
In addition, NOAA forecasters say a CME could hit Earth's magnetic field late on July 18th. The combined impact of the CME and the incoming solar wind stream could cause some stormy space weather around Earth in the days ahead. NOAA forecasters estimate a 50% - 65% chance of polar geomagnetic storms on July 18-20. www.spaceweather.com Published on 16 Jul 2013
How to Watch the Sun: Spaceweather 101 - http://youtu.be/ld5ecZuHECA Energy from Space 2.0: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15b-jx... Original music by NEMES1S : http://www.suspicious0bservers.org/shop/ [Get NEMES1S Music!] http://www.soundclick.com/nemes1s TODAY's New LINKS: Reconnection: http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/t... State of the Climate: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/nationa... Length of Day: http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/... Neptune Moon: http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/fil... The REAL Climate Changer: http://youtu.be/_yy3YJBOw_o Ice Age Soon? http://youtu.be/UuYTcnN7TQk An Unlikely but Relevant Risk - The Solar Killshot: http://youtu.be/X0KJ_dxp170 |
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