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The Sun Unleashes Coronal Mass Ejection At Earth
astroengine writes "Yesterday morning, at 08:55 UT, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory detected a C3-class flare erupt inside a sunspot cluster. 100,000 kilometers away, deep within the solar atmosphere (the corona), an extended magnetic field filled with cool plasma forming a dark ribbon across the face of the sun (a feature known as a 'filament') erupted at the exact same time. It seems very likely that both eruptions were connected after a powerful shock wave produced by the flare destabilized the filament, causing the eruption. A second solar observatory, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, then spotted a huge coronal mass ejection blast into space, straight in the direction of Earth. Solar physicists have calculated that this magnetic bubble filled with energetic particles should hit Earth on August 3, so look out for some intense aurorae — a solar storm is coming."
If you want a warning when auroras are likely to be occuring without paying Spaceweather for alerts (so you can scurry outside and look), check out the NOAA's SWPC mailing lists. Go for the K-Index lists, and sign up for all those that apply for your location.
To figure out which minimum k-index results in visible aurora from your location, check out this helpful page; just enter in your latitude and longitude, and it'll give you your "magnetic latitude"; match that up with a k-index using the table, and you know which mailing lists to sign up for.
If your phone does email, you can get the alerts anywhere; if your phone doesn't but your provider has an email-to-sms gateway, you could just forward emails for the same effect. :)
Going by the values on Wikipedia and NASA's GOES web site, a C3 CME is a total influx of about 3 micro-watts per square meter. For reference, normal solar insolation is about 360 watts per square meter. So, the answer to your rhetorical statement is, "Yes, this is being massively overhyped, because the sun hasn't done diddly squat over the last five years and someone has to justify paying billions of dollars for solar observing satellites."
Before anyone gets all pissy... yes, the CME comes in the form of energized protons and pico-wave X-Rays, so they are more destructive to human tissue than normal sunlight. But given that the Earth survived a Y+ level (1000-10,000 times more powerful) in 1859 with no one keeling over dead, I think we're safe.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Pretty much, just look at the pretty aurora. Worst case scenario is some satellite communications will be disrupted. The atmosphere provides more than adequate shielding against such things.
Not to be pedantic, but telegraph operators did drop dead during the Carrington Flare, if only because they were more or less attached to massive "antennas." Moreover, the usual threat of solar storms is not radiation to people, but to the radio equipment that makes modern life possible. This one should only graze the
It's traveling very fast (one day to get here) in pretty much a straight line. It is so much larger and faster than the Earth that orbital motion can be neglected. Link
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Last time we had a decent CME along with clear skies, I went outside and saw Aurora spread across the sky .. and this was located a 30 minute drive outside of New York City. Grabbed my Canon point and shoot camera and set it for 10 second exposure and this was the result:
http://photo.omnistep.com/aurora11072004/
I heard they were seen as far south as the Carolina's.
Here are the classifications, and a C3 means few if any noticeable impact on Earth. It is the X class flares that we need to be concerned about:
http://www.spaceweather.com/glossary/flareclasses.html