X-Class Solar Flare Coming Friday

First time accepted submitter kit_triforce writes Satellites have just detected a powerful X1.6-class solar flare. The source was active sunspot AR2158, which is directly facing Earth. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the extreme ultraviolet flash. Ionizing radiation from the flare could cause HF radio blackouts and other communications disturbances, especially on the day-lit side of Earth. In the next few hours, when coronagraph data from SOHO and STEREO become available, we will see if a coronal mass ejection (CME) emerges from the blast site. If so, the cloud would likely be aimed directly at Earth and could reach our planet in 2 to 3 days.

Comments

Re:Made in America

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Can we hope it ends this farcical "progress" and return the planet to steam and gaslight?

spaceweather.com

[QuietLagoon]

Times like this, I sympathize with the sysadmin of the spaceweather.com website. I hope she/he had nothing planned for this evening.....

Re:spaceweather.com

[oneiros27]

Bah ... it's mostly static content. The sites that get hammered on these sorts of things are:

• NOAA SWPC
• CCMC's iSWA
• Helioviewer
• SDO's daily movies

... etc. The various 'latest images' pages for SDO, SOHO, STEREO, etc. won't be as interesting as the imagers that are that tight in have already seen the good stuff (for that flare; there might be more from that same active region; you can track that at Solar Monitor or iSolSearch)... there *might* be something from this CME still to come in the HI1 and HI2 instruments from STEREO, though.

You might also want to check The Sun Today, which tends to have good explanations of what's happened, and they have a few movies for this event.

(disclaimer : I work at the Solar Data Analysis Center, and have worked on some of the sites that I've mentioned, and know the sysadmins for all but one of 'em)

Re:Solar Flare Prediction? Yay

[rmdingler]

Actually, we'd have two or three days notice that a big one (Carrington Event) was to strike earth directly.

We'd only know about an hour in advance whether or not the CME's energy pulse would line up catastrophically with our own magnetic poles.

So even if we know it's coming, catastrophic is only one possibility.

Wooo!

[funwithBSD]

HAM bands in the VHF range will be opening up! I am going to rig for 10m and 15 and see what happens.

I might a QSO from Europe with a little luck.

Re:Just as long as it's not XK-class.

[MrDoh!]

Unless there's that lone scientist who isn't being listened to by everyone else, as he's got the evidence that the sensors are wrong, and that it's going to be XKCD class.

Re:Made in America

[LynnwoodRooster]

Based on your UID, you were around when it was steam and gaslight, right?

Re:What about electronics?

[riT-k0MA]

I contacted the Hermanus Magnetic Observatory a few minutes ago. Here's what I got from them:
Please be advised: the data is for South Africa, which is closer to the equator. Places closer to the poles will experience slightly stronger conditions.

Two CME's are heading this way. Precise time of impact not yet known. They should hit 12-13 September (South African Standard Time). Conditions should clear by Saturday afternoon SAST.

CME1:
Glancing blow. No need to worry about it, unless you have a satellite in space.

CME2:
Direct hit on earth.
GPS satellites are expected to be affected.
Communications equipment will probably be affected.
Transmission lines are not expected to be affected.
Electronics are not expected to be affected.

Re:Just as long as it's not XK-class.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he said that there are some very large transformers that would be destroyed and would take 5 to 10 years to replace due to there being nowhere tooled up to replace them.

This has been repeated a lot, but I think is a bit over-inflated as a risk. Nothing against Phil Plait, as a quite a few other knowledgeable people have also repeated it.

The problem with large transformers connected to large power grids or long transmission lines, is that a geomagnetic storm can induce a current that is effectively DC compared to the 50/60 Hz of the power distribution network. Transformer cores can only handle so much magnetic field, and hence only so much current, before they begin to saturate, where each additional bit of current creates less and less magnetic field within the core, and hence the core resists increasing current less. In other words, as it saturates, the impedance goes down, and the transformer will pull a lot more current just like switching from a large valued resistor to a small valued one pulls more current. Too much current, and it overheats and can damage (potentially catastrophically if windings short out).

There are two ways to catch this. The first is to watch for DC currents going into the transformer, and either trip a breaker or reduce usage of that line if the DC current goes too far out of spec. A lot of power equipment won't see DC currents being designed for the AC grid. But these days, more and more places do check for DC current because of problems from such storms. If the equipment isn't monitored for DC current though, the increasing AC current from the transformer saturating can still trip vanilla AC circuit breakers (with a few caveats).

So it is not like a storm just will blow out all transformers connected to the power grid. It comes down to whether or not the protection equipment is installed and works as designed. If the protection equipment interrupt the circuit, or if the transformer was so marginal that the protection equipment doesn't kick in soon enough, then it could be damaged. There certainly have been cases of protection equipment programmed with the wrong limits before, for example. But in the end, it is just extra stress on the system, not some massive failure blowing out everything without hope.