For the third day in a row, sunspot 1261 has unleashed a significant M-class solar flare. The latest blast at 0357 UT on August 4th registered M9.3 on the Richter Scale of Flares, almost crossing the threshold into X-territory (X-flares are the most powerful kind).
Earth’s magnetic field is likely to receive a double-strike from the clouds of gas on … Read the rest of this article
On August 2nd, the sun hurled a cloud of plasma (Coronal Mass Ejection – CME) toward Earth when magnetic fields above sunspot 1261 erupted. Analysts expect the CME to arrive during the early hours of August 5th, possibly sparking geomagnetic storms around the poles.
This is not a big event; the eruption that propelled the cloud in our direction registered … Read the rest of this article
After more than a week of quiescence, solar activity is picking up with the emergence of two large sunspot groups on the sun’s northeastern limb.
The active regions are crackling with C- and M-class solar flares. So far none of the eruptions has been squarely Earth directed, but that could change in the days ahead as solar rotation turns the … Read the rest of this article
The first day of northern summer began with a solar flare. Magnetic fields above sunspot complex 1236 erupted during the early hours of June 21st, hurling a coronal mass ejection (CME) almost directly toward Earth. The incoming CME does not appear to be particularly potent; nevertheless, the cloud could trigger polar geomagnetic storms when it reaches Earth on or about … Read the rest of this article
Yesterday morning (June 7th) around 06:41 UT, magnetic fields above sunspot complex 1226-1227 became unstable and erupted. The blast produced an M2-class solar flare, an S1-class radiation storm, and a massive CME. A recording of the blast from NASA’s solar Dynamics Observatory ranks as one of the most beautiful and dramatic movies of the SDO era. This video of the … Read the rest of this article
The sun has just experienced a storm—not of explosive flares and hot plasma, but of icy comets.
“The storm began on Dec 13th and ended on the 22nd,” says Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab in Washington, DC. “During that time, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) detected 25 comets diving into the sun. It was crazy!”
Sundiving comets—a.k.a. … Read the rest of this article
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A partial solar … Read the rest of this article
On August 1, 2010, an entire hemisphere of the sun erupted. Filaments of magnetism snapped and exploded, shock waves raced across the stellar surface, billion-ton clouds of hot gas billowed into space. Astronomers knew they had witnessed something big.
It was so big, it may have shattered old ideas about solar activity.
“The August 1st event really opened our eyes,” … Read the rest of this article
An active region just over the sun’s eastern horizon is crackling with solar flares and hurling material high above the stellar surface.
One of yesterday’s flares, a C4-class event, created a wave of ionization in Earth’s upper atmosphere despite the fact that the blast site was not directly visible from Earth. The source of this activity appears to be old … 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
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