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 March 10th or early hours of March 11th. Strong geomagnetic storms are possible when the cloud arrives. NOAA forecasters say the odds of a strong geomagnetic storm at that time is 50%.
The same eruption that hurled the CME toward Earth also produced a monsterous tsunami of plasma on the sun which was about 100,000 km high and raced outward at 250 km/s with a total energy of about 2 million megatons of TNT. Such waves often underlie CMEs like the one en route to Earth now.
Animated forecast tracks show that the CME will also hit the Mars Science Lab (MSL) spacecraft on March 12th followed by Mars itself on March 13th. Mars rover Curiosity onboard MSL might get some interesting readings as the cloud passes by.
Filed under: The Sun
