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
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June 24: NASA’s next Mars rover has completed the journey from its California birthplace to Florida in preparation for launch this fall. The Mars Science Laboratory rover, also known as Curiosity, arrived late Wednesday night at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center aboard an Air Force C-17 transport plane. |
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June 24: NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has discovered the best evidence |
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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
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 solar eruption of August 7th might affect Earth after all. Newly-arriving data from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) show a CME heading our way with a significant Earth-directed component. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras when the cloud arrives on August 10th. A movie of the CME is featured on today’s edition of http://spaceweather.com.
[phpbay]solar … Read the rest of this article
During the early hours of August 1st, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded a complex global disturbance on the Earth-facing side of the sun.
Most of the sun’s northern hemisphere was involved in the event, which included a long-duration C3-class solar flare, a “solar tsunami, ” and a massive filament eruption.
As a result of these blasts, a coronal mass … Read the rest of this article
Two sunspots, which appeared on the autumnal equinox to break several months of extreme solar quiet [see New Sunspots (Finally!)], have faded away, leaving the sun blank once again. The deepest solar minimum in nearly a century appears poised to continue. NASA spacecraft are now reporting a surge in cosmic rays around Earth caused, somewhat ironically, by this low … 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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