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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."
It's cosmic bukkake!
Fine, just don't get it in our hair.
I hope this isn't some hyped up story about something the sun does regularly.
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
sooo are you saying i should check out the sweet sunset that evening, or prepare for oblivion, or put on some sunscreen, or what? i beg your pardon, i'm just not sure what the proper reaction is when a huge coronal mass ejection blasts a magnetic bubble filled with energetic particles at me.
i could live a little longer in this prison
I would laugh if it ricocheted off the ISS and missed earth entirely.
If we can land on this coronal-flare and drill a hole into it. Carefully placing a nuke inside the hole, we can divert it so that both halves will miss the earth and everything will be OK.
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. :)
Wouldn't it be ironic if this solar flare knocks SOHO out of commission?
So now when the network dies tomorrow it really will be solar flares. So much for my running joke.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
No counselor. This is an entirely different phenomenon.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
I don't have a clue how common of an event this is supposed to be, but from the tone of the article I think tinfoil will offer sufficient protection from it. My guess would be that the real story is that the birth of this "solar storm" was recorded.
Last call for alcohol!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
So... if I’m flying from Houston to Frankfurt next week, should I be worried?
It's just like they teach us in the movies.
You make a black man president and space tries to kill us.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
Do they mean it's traveling a straight line? Or do they mean it's is moving in such a way so as to collide with us when we come around to a certain point in space?
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Stop playing with that Sun, you'll put your eye out!
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Is this how Sprint decided to deploy Android 2.2 to the EVO tomorrow?
I suppose that this means you'll never have to leave your house again.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
We're doomed!!!
*running in circles and soiling myself*
For those extra special pictures, when JPEG just isn't enough.
It just means I get to take more pictures like these.
I wrote an application that keeps track of auroral potential WRT photography. It's public domain, and you can get the latest version of the project here. Linux, OSX. Nothing for windows, sorry. At least, not without substantial linux-like underpinnings. Love to hear about it if you did get it running under windows, of course.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
How far south will they be visible? Haven't seen an aurora in a very long time.
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.
Why would Oracle do something like this?!?!?
I wouldn't get too excited. Only a C3.2 flare (ratings in order of severity are A,B,C,M,X) and not even a blip of high energy proton flux. Maybe we'll get some minor geomagnetic storming with the plasma cloud arrival and some auroral activity at least...
... and made my wife laugh in a crowded theater.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
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
Hello? Did nobody READ the summary?
"100,000 kilometers away" ??????
The sun is about 150 MILLION kilometers away from Earth.
Two events occurred on/around the sun's surface, 100'000km apart. Not 100'000km from us.
You should get a new job. Yours sucks!
Maybe he was dictating?
The astrologers have been predicting some catastrophic event on August 3 for months. Something about all the planets being aligned. We'll never hear the end of it now.
I expected a misstep or two with the takeover, but Oracle REALLY screwed up this time!
Please tell me Nicolas Cage hasn't been studying a page full of seemingly random numbers that list the details of major disasters...
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
"Hello? Did nobody READ the summary?"
Yes, did you stop paying attention after you misunderstood the words "100,000 kilometers away"?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
How will this affect IKAROS, the Japanese solar sail?
Hey, babe wanna see my corona mass ejection?
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Don't worry. The world will not end before 2012. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Sad to say, we can't all get paid to surf /.
Somebody has to make things and grow food and shit.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
You get paid to shit and you say it like it's a bad thing.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
It's friday, so I get into work early, before lunch even. The phone rings. Shit!
I turn the page on the excuse sheet. "SOLAR FLARES" stares out at me. I'd better read up on that. Two minutes later I'm ready to answer the phone.
"Hello?" I say.
"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN, I'VE BEEN TRYING TO GET YOU ALL MORNING?!"
I hate it when they shout at me early in the morning. It always puts me in a bad mood. You know what I mean.
"Ah, yes. Well, there's been some solar activity this morning, it always disrupts electronics..." I say, sweet as a sugar pie.
"Huh? But I could get through to my friends?!"
"Yes, that's entirely possible, solar activity is very unpredictable in it's effects. Why last week, we had some files just dissappear from a guys account while he was working on it!"
More here...
Weird, I had a dream this morning involving this theme, and I hadn't seen this story until after I woke up. In the dream, my game console was making a weird noise that wouldn't stop. I disconnected it, but it kept making the noise. Then I went into another part of the house and everything was making that noise, and there was no power. I thought it was an EMP or something from a nuclear blast, but then realized that would be very short, not continuous.
Watch out Baphomet our sun god has seen enough! He is not pleased with us, and will descending upon shortly to once again rule and set things straight....I for one welcome our returning fiery, deity overlord!
Stop playing with that Sun, you'll put your eye out!
Momma told me never look into the eyes of the sun.
"But momma, that's where the fun is!"
-Bruce Springsteen (song made popular by Manfred Mann)
The Georgia Satellites should have covered this, because it's the satellites that are most likely to be blinded. I hope GPS and communications isn't too affected by this.
Free Martian Whores!
That's what she said?
You get paid to shit and you say it like it's a bad thing.
I didn't mean me! Either way, it's like they say, it's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009