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Sun Blasts Another CME At Earth and Mars

Posted by Soulskill on from the careful-you-could-put-an-eye-out dept.

astroengine writes "On Friday, the sun hurled a coronal mass ejection (CME) at our planet that sparked a strong geomagnetic storm and beautiful aurorae at high latitudes. Late on Sunday (EST), the sun unleashed yet another Earth-bound CME after an M9 flare erupted over a particularly active sunspot region — the CME is expected to hit Earth on Tuesday and Mars on Wednesday. This series of flares and CMEs have ignited the strongest period of solar storms since 2005, according to an NOAA space weather advisory."

4 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Has this ever caused noticeable interference? by uptownguy · · Score: 5, Informative

    but does anyone have an example where one caused noticeable impact?

    You mean noticeable like this or perhaps like this?

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    I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
  2. They rank these storms by Hadlock · · Score: 3, Informative

    They have a designated ranking system for CME/EMP effects on earth. It goes from C or M all the way up to X5 I believe.

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    moox. for a new generation.
    1. Re:They rank these storms by oneiros27 · · Score: 5, Informative

      'ranking system for CME/EMP effects' ... 'all the way up to X5'?

      Wow. Well, what you're talking about is the 'Flare Class' which only classifies the amount of x-ray energy given off by a flare. It's a log scale, so M is 10x as large as a C, and X is 10x as large as an M. Of course, there's no cap on it, and there have been X20 flares recorded. Of course, the sensors saturate, and as we're only really dealing with one significant figure and a magnitude, I don't know how much precision they have at those higher values.

      To make things even more fun, there's also a flare 'importance' value, which is based on the energy and size of the flaring region in the optical (visible) spectrum.

      But neither of these classifications have to do with CMEs, and particularly not their affects at earth. For that, you'd need to look at the solar wind folks, who are obsessed with things like 'Bz' (z-component of the magnetic field', ie, how is it oriented relative to the earth's magnetic field?) and radio bursts.

      The closest thing that I can think of to what you describe would be a catalog of ICMEs (Interplanetary CMEs), but even those, if you look at the catalog, are just raw numbers, no sort of ranking to it. (the column with 'A' and 'B' in it are which of the two STEREO spacecraft saw the event, 'Ahead' or 'Behind')

      Disclaimer : I'm not a solar physicist, but I work in a solar data archive, and have done work trying to normalize solar event catalogs.

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      Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
  3. Re:Ra is pissed by Canazza · · Score: 4, Informative

    Leviticus 16:15 "He shall then slaughter the goat for the sin offering for the people"
    and Leviticus 16:20-22 (Origin of the "Scape goat")

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    It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.