Last month (April 8-11), scientists, government officials, emergency planners and others converged on Boulder, Colorado, for NOAA’s Space Weather Workshop—an annual gathering to discuss the perils and probabilities of solar storms.
The current solar cycle is weaker than usual, so you might expect a correspondingly low-key meeting. On the contrary, the halls and meeting rooms were abuzz with excitement about … Read the rest of this article
One of the largest sunspots in years, AR1944, has turned toward Earth and it is crackling with strong flares. On Jan. 7th (yesterday), the active region produced M7- and X1-class eruptions, and more appear to be in the offing. As this alert was being issued, analysts were waiting for more data from solar observatories to clarify the possibility of CME … Read the rest of this article
On Sept. 29th, a long filament of magnetism in the sun’s northern hemisphere erupted, producing a magnificent CME and the must-see movie above from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Although the CME was not aimed at Earth, our planet might receive a glancing blow from the cloud on Oct. 2-3.
This event also hurled a magnificent CME into space. The magnetized … Read the rest of this article
Like a dragon breathing fire, a powerful blast of plasma erupts from the Sun in this colourised view of a ‘coronal mass ejection’.
These huge clouds of magnetised plasma are ejected from the Sun’s atmosphere – the corona – and launched into interplanetary space. Millions of tonnes of gas race away from the Sun at several million kilometres per hour.… Read the rest of this article
New sunspot AR1532 is crackling with M-class solar flares, including a brief but intense M6-flare on July 28th. A coronal mass ejection (CME) produced by Saturday’s M6-class flare is heading toward Earth. According to analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab, the cloud could deliver a glancing blow to our planet’s magnetic field on July 31st around 1500 UT (+/- … Read the rest of this article
Forecasters say Solar Max is due in the year 2013. When it arrives, the peak of 11-year sunspot cycle will bring more solar flares, more coronal mass ejections, more geomagnetic storms and more auroras than we have experienced in quite some time.
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Solar maximum is still a year away. This month sky watchers got a taste of things to come …
A favorite theme of science fiction is “the portal”–an extraordinary opening in space or time that connects travelers to distant realms. A good portal is a shortcut, a guide, a door into the unknown. If only they actually existed….
It turns out that they do, sort of, and a NASA-funded researcher at the University of Iowa has figured out how … Read the rest of this article
Sunspot AR1429 unleashed another strong flare (category M7.9) on March 13th. The explosion produced a significant coronal mass ejection (CME), which forecasters say should reach Earth today, March 15th, at 06:20 UT (+/- 7 hours), possibly triggering minor to moderate geomagnetic storms.
A bright comet related to sungrazing Comet Lovejoy dove towards the sun earlier this week. The orbiting Solar … Read the rest of this article
As Earth’s magnetic field reverberates from the impact of one Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) on March 8th, a second CME is on the way.
Big sunspot AR1429 unleashed an M6-class solar flare yesterday (March 9th), and the eruption hurled a cloud of plasma almost directly toward Earth.
Forecasters say the CME could reach our planet during the late hours of … Read the rest of this article
Big sunspot AR1429 has unleashed another major flare–an X5-class eruption on March 7th at 00:28 UT.
As a result of the blast, a radiation storm is underway and a CME will likely hit Earth’s magnetic field in a day or so.
Geomagnetic storms are already in progress at high latitudes due to earlier eruptions from the active sunspot. Last night, … Read the rest of this article
The Sun Now (Visible light)
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The Sun Now (H-Alpha light)
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Aurora Oval
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Aurora Oval
(Southern Hemisphere) |
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