NASA Notices New, Nasty Solar Storm Type

saskboy writes "Solar Storms generally aren't this bad, but in January unique conditions led to a "proton superhighway" that bombarded earth with fast moving protons that could have harmed astronauts caught without a radiation shield. "Scant minutes after the January 20th [2005] flare, a swarm of high-speed protons surrounded Earth and the Moon. Thirty minutes later, the most intense proton storm in decades was underway." Listen to the story here. Archives from the January storms are also available from SpaceWeather.com"

Comments

Re:WTF

[Jugalator]

I think it was supposed to be a parody on zealous people claiming humanity is affecting the environment, but the parent poster doesn't agree with this and rather think they're poorly informed or educated in how the environment works. Well, it's the only way I can make it make sense to me at least.

Explains lousy ham propagation

[LM741N]

The article expains how lousy amateur radio propagation in the HF bands can occur when www.spaceweather.com or WWV says that something unpredicted is happening and they are caught off guard. Its rather amazing. Thats why its important to sign up for their telephone call and email alert service. Rob N3FT

Looking up on the SOHO gallery

[KinkifyTheNation]

I thought this was pretty interesting, here's a picture on January 20th, then another picture from February 20th.

Re:It's too bad that we don't have a constellation

[canavan]

You do know that SOHO is already happily orbiting L1? Obviously, from L1 it has an unobstructed view of the sun all the time. Additionally, this gives us almost 180 degrees of coverage - not quite as good at the rim, but coverage none the less.

Solar Energetic Particles

[oneiros27]

All that I know I get from the others. (I do IT in a department full of solar physicists, but I don't fully undertand the data that I deal with)

NOAA maintains a list of 'Solar Proton Events'. My boss maintains a copy of the data, which has an extra footnote:

The >10 MeV proton event began on January 16 at 0210 UTC following the X2.6 flare late on the 15th. The peak flux following this flare was 365 pfu at 16/1840 UTC. The >10 MeV protons decayed to 117 pfu by midday on January 17 when a stronger injection of protons occurred following the X3.8 flare and CME. This new infusion began at 17/1240 UTC and peaked with 5040 pfu at 17/1750 UTC. The event decayed to about 19 pfu early on January 20 when yet another proton flare occurred. The X7 flare and CME that occurred on January 20 produced the hardest and most energetic proton event of Cycle 23. The >10 MeV protons peaked at 1860 pfu at 20/0810 UTC. The >100 MeV protons peaked at 652 pfu at 20/0710 UTC, which was the highest &gt100 MeV proton flux level observed since 1989 October (680 pfu). The >10 MeV proton event finally ended at 22/1755 UTC.

So, the CME (believed to be) associated with it occured about 3 hrs before GOES got hit by it.

Images and movies of the event, as seen by LASCO, are at:

ftp://ares.nrl.navy.mil/pub/lasco/halo/20050115b