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Geomagnetic Storm In Progress
shogun writes "The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports a strong geomagnetic storm is in progress. The shuttle, ISS and GPS systems may be affected."
They think this storm was caused by a weak solar flare on April 3rd. As you may expect, this has caused some unusually impressive northern lights since it started. What you may not expect is a photograph from Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi aboard the International Space Station showing the aurora from orbit. He apparently tweets a lot of pictures from space. He and his crewmates have taken over 100,000 pictures since coming aboard the ISS.
NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center has a bunch of data on the storm, including the estimated 3-hour Planetary Kp-index, and a bunch of other data and alerts.
A readable description of the relationship between geomagnetic events and aurora can be found here.
I wondered what set off my allergies this morning.
You know, Soichi Noguchi, you are doing very little to dispel the classic stereotype of Japanese tourists always with a camera around their neck, taking pictures of everything!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
What the heck is "twitpic"?!? It sounds like a web app that twits use to post their pictures... what's that you say? It IS a web app that twits use to post their pictures? Uh... I guess it is aptly name then.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
But I'd love to see it without the vehicle obscuring it. It would help to get a better visual grasp of the structure of the aurora itself.
From this you can see that the green glow is low and the red glow above it and diffuse. Without the obscuration you could get a better idea of the pattern of the intersection of the magnetically guided particle stream(s) with the atmosphere.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It's too bad they couldn't have sent one up to them on the ISS, they could have used it to take pict... they could have twittered from... they could have at least used it to... hmmm
We're having cloudy weather (big surprise in the Seattle area), but it's sure be nice if this would last another 8-10 hours so we had a chance at seeing the aurora this evening. Unfortunately it's rare down here, and even rarer for it to coincide with a clear night...
#DeleteChrome
FWIW, I posted on my blog about this amazing pic from Soichi, explaining it a bit and giving my thoughts.
*** Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer http://www.badastronomy.com
..!!
To watch the geomagnetic activity live, check AuroraWatch: http://corona-gw.phys.ualberta.ca/AuroraWatch/
You can also subscribe to receive e-mail alerts about probable Northern Lights.
From the website: "AuroraWatch forecasts are made by examining the behaviour of the Earth's magnetic field strength, which is measured by ground-based magnetometers."
Who is General Failure, and why is he reading my disk?
... Toyota has issued a statement asking Prius owners to wrap their cars in tin foil before driving.
So, here I am in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but a 3g Dongle and suddenly this Geomagnetic storms£(*&^SGU &@*(&((clkxjnx..........NO CARRIER
This is cool as it is on the heals of this story: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/03/23/0859257/Senate-Votes-To-Replace-Aviation-Radar-With-GPS in which airplanes will now rely only on GPS
This reminds me of the Stargate SG-1 episode "Window of Opportunity" where Earth and several other planets get stuck in a "Groundhog Day" type scenario, and only Jack O'Neill and Teal'c realize what's happening.
Aurora is so beautiful yet its appearance means something devastating could potentially happen to our TV signal, our electricity gird, our internet, well... our entire life !
All his tweets are "from phone". What carrier gets reception up there is what I want to know.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
To cause an earthquake, it would have to be a concentrated beam of EM energy, something that only man made technology can do. There are reports that HAARP was on at full power from a few days ago to a few hours past the Haitian earthquake. HAARP can cause earthquakes. Russians and Chinese have the same super weapons.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9174828/NASA_Key_antenna_fails_as_i_Discovery_i_enters_orbit?taxonomyId=12
ceci n'est pas un sig
Tell him to just lean out of the window for a better shot. What could go wrong?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
so they are just going to randomly lie about this? for what gain? My phone signal surely has been affected by this. I usually have a solid full bars at work and i'm roaming atm.
Contrary to what you seem to believe, TV/Internet and electricity are NOT all there is to life. Yes really.
Sure some slashdotters will die as they are exposed to the harsh rays of the sun when they wander outside for the first time but life will continue on. Some people with no healthy fear of hights will repair the cables and voila, everything be back to normal.
We had power failures before. They are no big deal. Go outside, empty the fridge and have a party. You know. With girls... oh okay, you can remain in the kitchen and look through the window at them, while you build a computer out of egg-cartons.
Mind you, I got a phone-jammer, that I sometimes use just for fun. It is amusing to see just how people react when their cell phone dies. Some really do react as if you cut the umbilical cord.
In a way, it would be an intresting social experiment. Cut the power/internet over the entire globe and see how each culture/area reacts to it. Why do some disaster areas result in looting and rioting and others remain calm? You can't really compare disasters but a global strike like this would be easier to compare. Would there be riots all over? None at all? Only in certain economic areas? Or (oh boy I am going to get it for this one) does it depend on race? Culture? Local leadership?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
...how will this affect my GPS for geocaching?
Beautiful pictures, BTW...I have never seen them in person, they've got to be just that cooler from space. Space! SPACE!!!!
Sigh, back to work in my little cube.
Yes. I just watched the movie 2012. Very scientific tribute to plate techtonics and neutron interactions causing some dude to be ground up in some gears used to close a door that were completely jammed by a power cable.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Now this should get down modded, Maybe it's a German camera did you ever think about that you insensitive clod!
Why bother
Here are some photos I took of auroras generated by the leading edge of this GMF disturbance in northeastern Montana.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If it was a German camera it would have gone Klink?
sound like something out of Final Destination with a death like that.
I'm on their various maillists since I discovered that sensible electronic tend to crash better when there is solar activity. (My old Palm III was resetting it's memory everytime their was anykind of solar burps). But their annoucement are cryptical at best. And last evening their mail said that:
Space Weather Message Code: WARK06
Serial Number: 162
Issue Time: 2010 Apr 05 1831 UTC
CANCEL WARNING: Geomagnetic K-Index of 6 expected
Cancel Serial Number: 161
Original Issue Time: 2010 Apr 05 1427 UTC
Comment: Earlier indications of anticipated geomagnetic storm activity are no
longer present.
NOAA Space Weather Scale descriptions can be found at
www.swpc.noaa.gov/NOAAscales
Which sounds like the opposite of the Slashdot summary...
What isn't there to buy about a solar flare?
5-6 years into its most silent decade, sun suddenly bursts.
isnt that too abnormal to believe ?
Read radical news here
there may be some other reason.
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I was outside last night at 3AM, and... instead of being sort of greenish and dancing slowly, they were, very dim, pale white, and were almost like... strobes, pulsing, instead of a slow dance. Neat stuff :-)
Sent from my PDP-11
No, not really. Its a giant ball of fusion, photons, plasma and gases that is 99.8% of the solar system's mass that is doing all kinds of crap under the surface that we can't see. Hell we don't really know what is going on down there under the surface.
Why can't this giant ball of fusion have a medium sized solar flare this week without it being beyond the realm of possibility?
What else would this be other than a solar flare?
And Space Weather shows the sunspot and SOHO shows the CMEs, not like its something the government is saying and there is no evidence of it happening.
http://spaceweather.com/
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime-images.html
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/pickoftheweek/
GNN NEWS FLASH:
Geomagnetic Storm in Progress in the Sol System
No ships may enter hyperspace during this turn.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
because it is TOO big to be that irregular. imagine, a huge ball of fusion, will stay silent for close to a decade, then just pop a single strong flare once, suddenly, 'hailing' a new era of activity.
this is sun, a ball of fusion as you noted. not earth with its tectonic plates and a handful of existing outlets for magma trying to find its way out.
Read radical news here
Well, can't really come up with any sources of solar weather that don't have something to do with a government, government agency or enterprise that has government funding so...
Well, this little bit of solar weather isn't because its suddenly an active decade, its just a couple solar farts of CME and energy hitting the Earth.
The sunspots and activity is coming back up and they aren't sure why or how, which isn't unusual because no one is really sure how it all works. I can link and you can ignore it because it is from SOHO which is an implement of NASA and ESA, so Feds and EU together, oh noes.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/2010_03_15/
The Sun isn't "silent", it pulses and puts out massive amounts of energy in irregular fashion all the time. Now for a few years of its 8-10 billion year life it just hasn't been putting out enough to mess things up 93,000,000 miles away.
This week its sending out some energy, not a giant amount by its scale, just enough to screw with things and light up the sky.
The ball of fusion does have a lot of movement on its surface and convection currents under the surface, its not a featureless racquet ball except for the occasional sunspot or CME.
Has anyone ever tried to cross match Geomagnetic storms with Earthquake activity on the Earth ? Seems like a plausible connection ?
Nobody wants to try it because as soon as the connection is made, we'll lose the GoldenGate Bridge!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
That seems like something you should have looked up before making baseless assumptions.
But then again, they wouldn't be baseless assumptions if you researched things before you asked them. Seriously, this isnt a classroom from the 1950's, you are already on the internet if you are posting here, how hard is it to look that up?
While you are looking things up, you can build your own ground based magnetometer in your own house and see what happens during a geomagnetic storm, based on the same principles of science that are being used to measure the magnetic fields in space.
Every question you just asked is irrelevant. Funny how science works like that.
I have been here 9 months and still have not seen any lights. I am unlucky or need to move farther away from city.
http://saveie6.com/
It was the collission of electromagnetic energy from 300,000 iPads being turned on next to 700,000 people pretending they don't want one.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
i have deep mistrust of nasa due to their extreme closedness, cover-up and hushhush culture and their employer, us. govt.
had it been an european space agency, i would at least be sure of som independency.
Read radical news here
How about the White house, the Washington monument, Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Mt Rushmore... Apparently you are not watching enough disaster movies.
so if the solar flare wipes out life on earth, our future is secured, in space, with a japanese dude and his harem
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/view/129536/Female-astronauts-set-off-on-space-mission/
also, i think it would be fitting if the japanese dude and one of the chicks were the first to enter to space sex club, being japan is the world capital of weird sex
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
SOHO is a joint operation of NASA and ESA. Unfortunately all the solar observation satellites up there are NASA or shared with NASA right now.
So you don't trust NASA or the University of Alaska Fairbanks for solar weather, you don't trust the weather reports because NOAA gathers weather data and the US government put up the weather satellites?
no sir. not as long as those national security oaths are required to be signed by u.s. government for everyone getting involved in astronomy or space programs, including numerous 'security treaties that extend their tentacles to whomever is collaborating with them, including europe.
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That loud whirring sound is Werner Klemperer spinning in his grave.
Why bother
well, you were rather low in the trenches. had you had any possibility of access to serious stuff, like an observatory time, or radio telescope, or direct video from the space station, things would be different.
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