STEREO Satellites Spot Solar Flare Tsunami

westtxfun writes "The STEREO satellites recently confirmed the existence of solar mega-tsunamis when they captured height data after a sunspot recently erupted. The scale of this tsunami literally dwarfs the Earth's diameter — it was 62,000 miles high and raced across the surface at 560,000 mph! STEREO A and B orbit 90 degrees apart and luckily, one was overhead while the other saw the eruption on the limb. This gave NASA scientists enough data to confirm the tsunami wasn't a shadow, solving a modern solar mystery. The images are simply stunning, to boot."

Comments

Re:A way to solve tsunamis problems on Earth ?

[mcgrew]

Reading TFA is uncharacteristic for most slashdotters, but this one is definitely worthwhile.

Solar tsunamis pose no direct threat to Earth. Nevertheless, they are important to study. "We can use them to diagnose conditions on the sun," notes Gurman. "By watching how the waves propagate and bounce off things, we can gather information about the sun's lower atmosphere available in no other way."

"Tsunami waves can also improve our forecasting of space weather," adds Vourlidas, "Like a bull-eye, they 'mark the spot' where an eruption takes place. Pinpointing the blast site can help us anticipate when a CME or radiation storm will reach Earth."

And they're pretty entertaining, too. "The movies," he says, "are out of this world."

Pun aside, the movies ARE great. RTFA please, everyone! You'll be glad you did.

Surf's up

[Darth Sdlavrot]

kawabunga.

Re:It is probably 62 miles

[Monkeedude1212]

Yeah sorry, SOMEONE put a comma instead of a decimal. Growing trend.

Re:It is probably 62 miles

[Remus Shepherd]

Did you see the animation? That wave looks to be easily 1/14th of the solar diameter, especially near the origin.

What I learned from this article is that sunspots explode. Never knew that; I thought they faded away...

120, not 90

[necro81]

A correction from the summary: the two spacecraft are nearly 128 degrees apart, not 90. They were launched into slightly different heliocentric orbits that cause the angle between them to increase by about 21 degrees per year. They've already passed through the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points of the Sun-Earth system. In Feb 2011, they'll be on opposite sides of the Sun, then start to converge once again.

They really thought it might be a shadow?

[ender-]

FTA:

"We wondered," recalls Gurman, "is that a wave—or just a shadow of the CME overhead?"

Really? They thought it was a shadow? And what pray-tell would be shining brightly enough from above the CME material, to cast a shadow onto the surface of the Sun?

They didn't really think that through, did they?

Re:They really thought it might be a shadow?

[necro81]

It could be that a chunk of the CME was cold and not very luminous, but another chunk farther out was (the corona is very bright and hot, after all). Stereo images in multiple spectra, and it is well known that portions of the corona are much hotter than the surface of the sun, so it could be that in particular wavelengths the corona can cast shadows onto the sun's surface.

In any event, this was a comment made by a project scientist - a solar physicist - someone who probably knows more about the subject than you or I.

Re:They really thought it might be a shadow?

[gyrogeerloose]

It seems counter-intuitive but the sun's corona is brighter than it's actual surface. It's possible that some cooler ejecta from a solar flare could cast a shadow.

Too much gaming...

[Taibhsear]

Anyone else see the gifs and think "BOOM! HEADSHOT!"

Large CME?

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Wait a minute. Wasn't a CME this big supposed to completely destroy the power grid? Wasn't this supposed to plunge us back into the stone age?

So what happened?

Re:Large CME?

[JRManuel]

It depends. If the CME is headed toward the Earth, it could. Otherwise, no. CMEs are like shotgun blasts: a lot of scatter, but you still have to aim the gun in the right direction.

Re:Recent? Try February.

[oneiros27]

Actually, I confirmed it with one of the scientists (Joe Gurman) cited in the article -- there was an article from March that was inaccurate, and this was a correction to that previous article.

But, instead of marking it as a correction, it was posted as a new article. (I can't find the older article, so I don't know if it was removed)

They also linked straight to the movie, rather than to the explanation of what is being seen in the movie, or cite the original posting of the article, which had different images:

http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/SolarTsunami.shtml
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stereo/news/solar_tsunami.html

Joe also said that this was in fact "tsunami-like" in that it was the result of an initially downward wave that reflected back up, as opposed to other CMEs.

(and I probably should've added a disclaimer earlier -- I work for the STEREO Science Center)

Re:Recent? Try February.

[conspirator57]

(and I probably should've added a disclaimer earlier -- I work for the STEREO Science Center)

I'm sorry, this is /. Primary sources are not allowed to be involved in the conjectural, ad hominem disputes that pose for debate on this forum. You are welcome to contribute to some other topic, provided that you know nothing about it. Have a nice day.