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Today's Solar Flare
An anonymous reader writes "X1-class solar flare today (13:30 Universal Time). Still the SOHO spacecraft offers some of the all-time greatest snapshots anywhere on the web. The flare's residual activity would be shown white and at around 9 o'clock position here. There are 3 major categories, each 10 times stronger than the next: X-class flares are big; they are major events that can trigger planet-wide radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms. M-class flares are medium-sized; they generally cause brief radio blackouts that affect Earth's polar regions. C-class flares are small with few noticeable consequences here on Earth. If it were headed towards Earth, arrival is usually 48-72 hrs later (this is not coming this way). Future Mars astronauts should take a lead umbrella because one radiation day on Mars is like living at 70,000 feet on Earth." Nature is pretty.
It -always- rains on holiday weekends!
Isn't that what Intel said caused Pentium 4's to underperform? Must have been.
Calm down, it's *only* ones and zeroes.
An X1 class solar flare, huh? No wonder I've gotten so many popup ads of provocatively dressed women staring longingly into webcams today.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
X class flares happen quite often, especially around the peak of the solar cycle (which we are currently moving away from). Often, they are not earth directed and do not cause anything so nice as aurora (even if they do cause blackouts on some frequencies). Keep an eye on spaceweather.com and notice how often these things occur. The flare referenced in the article was probably the one that occured on Friday from sunspot 95 and did not appear to be earth directed (it occured while SS95 was just comming into vision). I'm surprised that this flare got on the front page, since there have been larger ones recently (I can't recall exactly when - obviously, its effects were small enough).
Fortunately, astronauts can find the protection they need indoors (from solar storms) ; shelter walls made of lightweight materials provide adequate shielding.
For those needing more on this, go find what you need here or, for something a little more cautious and "NASA" here.
Now only if we can get people to stop running about waving their arms and shouting "The Radiation! The Radiation!" we might get something productive done... Heh! No chance of that I guess, might as well join them...
*waves hands over head, runs about, starts screaming "The Radiation!" and giggling*
This is the information from SEC (NOAA): Only a few C class events are listed:
0221 UTC C2.8
0955 UTC C8.8
0930 UTC C6.7
You can easily see all the recent events from this plot of solar X-ray flux: (updated in real-time)
There was a minor X class flare last friday (as you can see from the plot!). This is what the poster may be refereing to:
8/30/02 1329 UTC X1.5 Sunspot 95
It was a limb event and isn't headed our way. The plot shows there were no X-ray flares today!
X class flares are fairly common (once every 2-3 weeks these days...) Usually they are near the limb or backside events and don't effect us other than a little radio interference. We might see an earth directed one from region 95 in the next few days. (But don't count on it!) If there is an X-ray event indicated by www.spaceweather.com, then check this alert page at Solar Terestrial Dispatch. These impact predictions are often very accurate! (Only updated if there is a strong earth directed event!)
"Nature is pretty" -- CmdrTaco
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mp
In particular this:
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/curr
is a reasonably small (3Mb) mpeg of the last 48 hours... the flare is right at the end of the sequence. Notice that although it appears on the right limb of the sun first, it's also pretty symetrical - indictating that the thing's coming straight for us.
Incidentally, if you've ever fancies getting your name on a comet, there are people who sit in front of those pages pressing ^r constantly in order to be the first to identify a new sungrazer. No, there's no software sitting processing the images in realtime for comet-like objects, and they (or rather, their ion tails) show up nicely.
Enjoy!
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
It seems to me that it probably could damage your binocs (exactly as you say). On the other hand, I used my binocs in the same fashion to view a solar eclipse, even when it was only about 20% eclipsed, and they still work fine. FWIW they are expensive 7x50 marine binoculars. They are gas-tight and filled with nitrogen.
I guess, since binocs transmit 9x% of the light, the power absorption is very low, once you get them adjusted so that the image is going through them. (But as you say, while you are adjusting, the image may briefly get projected on the edges somewhere, which can't be good.)
If you are worried about it, you could use something opaque like heavy paper to reduce the aperture of the objective. Or obtain some neutral density filters.
Another way to observe the sun is with a pinhole camera, although that is a bit more involved.
MM
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