Solar Eruption To Reach Earth Soon

rastos1 writes "Spacecraft from NASA recently observed an eruption on the Sun sending billions of tons of particles toward Earth. The solar eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, occurred Tuesday at 1:24 a.m. EDT (0524 GMT) and sent charged particles streaking outward at 380 miles per second. That's just over 1.3 million mph (2.2 million km/h). The solar fallout from the sun storm is expected to reach Earth over the next few days. Interestingly, an unnamed icy comet from the outer solar system dove into the sun and disintegrated nearly a the same time (video)."

Re:NBD, it seems

[epiphani]

Yeah, I can't understand why this is news. I've seen it on two sites now.

This wasn't even an M-class flare, and the CME is only expected to push planetary Kp to 4. As in this doesn't even register as a geomagnetic storm. See this page for an explanation of Kp [noaa.gov] and you can also see this page [noaa.gov] for the predicted impact.

Somehow some idiot picked up on this, and this news is making the rounds. I've seen a lot of people confused by the coverage - this is a bloody whisper in the solar flare world.

Check out the video though !

[ACK!!]

The whole icy comet diving into the sun and the bad ass far-side Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) is worth the 1:20 of your time. Very cool. Watching it happen is like watching something out of an old video game very interesting. Science can be quite a wild thing at times.

Re:NBD, it seems

[stevegee58]

Yes, but it provides a distraction for the public from the collapsing economy and rampant domestic NSA surveillance.

Re:NBD, it seems

[Ghjnut]

It's good to see stuff like this hit the front page. It helps space out the onslaught of disappointing stories slashdot breaks regarding the incompetence/malice of leadership in this country. Seeing a cruising ice comet hit the sun with a CME following is pretty damn cool too.

Solar observing from home

[umafuckit]

For those who are interested, it's possible to get the feeds from the orbital solar observatories and make your own movies of the Sun in action. A nice piece of software to automate this is jhelioviewer: http://jhelioviewer.org/ [jhelioviewer.org] You can even purchase a small solar telescope that will allow you to view the sun safely at hydrogen alpha wavelengths (at which a lot of features are visible). A popular beginner scope is the Meade PST: http://www.meade.com/product_pages/coronado/scopes/pst.php [meade.com] (Lunt is another good manufacturer). With that you can see solar flares, prominences, sun spots, etc. Prominences are particularly fun because they change visibly over the time-course of minutes; so you can literally see the Sun watch the sun change before your eyes. Here's a link on what's possible to see visually: http://www.prairieastronomyclub.org/resources/solar-observing/observing-the-sun-in-h-alpha/ [prairieastronomyclub.org]