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Space Science

NASA's Earth Observatory Shows Solar Flare 176

Posted by timothy from the and-the-hair-on-your-chinny-chin-chin dept.
staaktdenarbeid writes "In the past few months I became very impressed with the timeliness and quality of NASA's Earth Observatory. When hurricane Isabel struck, their imagery showed me the biggest latte ever made. Now that Southern California is on fire, it takes only a look from outer space to see how bad the sitation really is. And, today, a massive solar flare showed up on their website as soon as it errupted (so to speak). Each of these pictures is accompanied by detailed technical background. And for the rest of us, they also make perfect screen backgrounds. Very cool."
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NASA's Earth Observatory Shows Solar Flare More

NASA's Earth Observatory Shows Solar Flare

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  • Wait? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Isnt this just a reapeat?

  • FP (Score:1)

    by Venner ( 59051 ) *
    My first reaction.
    "Oooh. A Red Story."

    Making my Slashdollars count.

    Hope there's some aurora to see in the sky early Wednesday morning.

    • Re:FP (Score:2, Informative)

      by Chuqmystr ( 126045 )
      Well, if there are auroras to be seen this far south we'll never see 'em.

      I live in Riverside, CA, just 12 miles south of San Berdoo. We've not seen the sun in going on near a week. It's common to see the sun blotted out for 30 minutes or so at a time when fires happen but to see it gone for days at a time is strange to say the least. Right now, at 11:28pm it looks like a thick fog is moving through but it's smoke. Many of us with respitory problems are misserable to say the least.

      It's not worth bitching a

  • Impressed? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by seanadams.com ( 463190 ) *
    In the past few months I became very impressed with the timeliness and quality of NASA's Earth Observatory

    In the past few months, I've been impressed with how much of my money the government receives, and as much as I appreciate good science, I'd much rather spend a bit more of that money myself.

    • Re:Impressed? (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by pstreck ( 558593 )
      it's better them spending it on fancy telescopes than wars for false reasons.
      Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.
    • Man, this is so typical of people these days. "What about me? Why doesn't someone think about Me? Me! Me! Me!" Reminds me a lot of the seagulls in "Finding Nemo". "Mine?"

      Guess what, science benefits all of us (after all, 50 years ago, someone might have asked "Who cares about Quantum Mechanics??"... and yet today, we have transistors). The images NASA produces aren't just pretty pictures for us to appreciate. They're real, scientific data which can be used to understand the Sun and it's relationship
  • It's rare to see a agency funded by government bureaucracy that actually works well.

  • Tune going through my head all day (Score:3, Funny)

    by beacher ( 82033 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @12:35AM (#7335451) Homepage
    Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire"... I fell into a burning ring of fire.. I went down down down and the flames crept higher...and it burns burns burns.

    Maybe it's cause the solar flares cause my bald head to dry out and itch and burn. I should know better to go outside without my foil lined cap.
    B

  • ... if this were Star Trek... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by John Hansen ( 652843 ) <.crayz9001. .at. .foobar.homelinux.net.> on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @12:38AM (#7335476) Homepage

    Of course, this solar flare calls for the obligatory Star Trek joke:
    If this were Star Trek, we'd all be dead when the solar flare hits.

    That said, the ground images from the Terra satellites are nothing short of amazing. Since I live in Southern California, it really put a perspective on things.

  • aurora alert... (Score:5, Informative)

    by AmigaAvenger ( 210519 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @12:38AM (#7335477) Journal
    for anyone interested, the aurora from this recent blast is starting now, go out and observe it if you happen to have relatively dark skies... for the current 'weather' conditions, check the NASA POES [noaa.gov] satellite

    and better yet, just go to some recent aurora pics [ryankramer.com] to see what this one probably will look like...

  • Solar flares - bad for Christmas (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 ) <DancinSanta@gmail.com> on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @12:39AM (#7335479) Journal
    Every time the Sun burps, we up here get a little antsy. The problem is that although we have quite a bit of shielding protecting us from most of the bombardment, the ozone is pretty thin. Certainly, it's not a massive hole like down at the South Pole, but it's definitely noticeable at these latitudes.

    It's gotten to the point that we have to wear sunscreen when going outdoors or risk of getting a severe sunburn. It's double the problem because of all the snow which reflects the UV.

    But the UV issue really isn't either here or there in regards to this story, which I was hoping to eventually bring the shielding point back around to.

    The shielding that we've got is pretty thick, but no match for the massive amount of neutrinos and other charged particles that we are bombarded by. Luckily we've got the VA Radiation Belt as a natural shield.

    There ought to be a nice show tonight in the skies!

    • Re:Solar flares - bad for Christmas (Score:4, Interesting)

      by KD5YPT ( 714783 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @12:45AM (#7335509) Journal
      One point of note, all charged particles from the sun will get redirected by the earth's magnetic field to the polar region and be disipated in the upper atmosphere. Only a very, very powerful one (X with some ridiculously large number) can warp the earth magnetic field enough that it destroyed the ozone planetwide and ultimately, destroys us.

    • Re:Solar flares - bad for Christmas (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The shielding that we've got is pretty thick, but no match for the massive amount of neutrinos and other charged particles that we are bombarded by

      Neutrinos are not charged, and they won't harm you.

      The same thing that allows them to pass right through the earth's radiation belt, magnetic field and ozone layer without interacting with anything also means that they'll pass right through living tissue the same way.

      X-rays would be your biggest worry, but the exposure is inconsequential even in this huge bur
    • The shielding that we've got is pretty thick, but no match for the massive amount of neutrinos and other charged particles that we are bombarded by.

      If you line your hat with tinfoil the neutrinos won't be able to get through. I cannot afford to have leptonic emissions interrupting my precious bodily functions, especially when I am doing something important that requires mental acuity like programming emergency controller routines to run in nuclear facilities. So I'd say go with the hat, it's a lifesaver.
      • Luckily I hit on the idea of putting a thick layer of tinfoil in my shoe soles and that makes them bounce back into the ground.

        Well, that protects your feet, but what about your meat and two veggies? You better get mom to sew up a tinfoil jock strap if you don't want irradiated sperm.

  • Only damage to the Dollar (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @12:39AM (#7335482) Journal
    These rampant fires may be wreaking havoc upon insurance companies, but just remember, it is all part of nature. This catastrophe serves to remind us humans we are part of nature, not above it.

    Despite how horrific they appear to be, they serve some beneficial role in the grand scheme of things.

    Bla bla bla

    • Re:Only damage to the Dollar (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's also nature telling us that she needs NEW growth in large portions of the land. Old growth is pretty, but is a nightmare for animals that have to forage for plants that can't grow under a massive canopy. It'll make for GREAT habitat for all kinds of upland game, in addition to excellent transition areas that hunters love!
    • Part of nature??? Most of them were apparently caused by an arsonist!
      • and is not the arsonist a part of nature?

      • Re:Only damage to the Dollar (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Eraser_ ( 101354 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @01:19AM (#7335647)
        A lower poster posted it, but just to make sure this hits your inbox, these large open areas of brush, trees, etc, in the desert might I remind you, burn every so often naturally. The problem is, now there are multi-million dollar VIP homes in those mountains, out in the middle of no where, etc.

        Those VIPs make sure they fire department is well equipped to put out brush fires when they happen naturally (lightning, heat + rotting brush, etc). They do not however, line the pockets of the forest commision (or whoever) to go in and clear brush and things which would have burned naturally and completed a carbon cycle, etc. Yes small woodland creatures with big sad eyes die in the fires, they die when the brush is clear, and so on and so forth.

        Now a major fire starts (from a pipe bomb, a cigarette, or a lightning strike), the winds pick up and turn it into metal melting house reducing inferno, which we cannot contain, and nature settles it's tab.

        I'm no GD tree hugging hippie, but I'm also not in favor of pave it all mentality. Living in Florida I watched houses get built where they had to redo the foundation 4 times in a row because they were building too close to a lake. People are creeping into things which aren't meant to have permanent dwellings put on them. They built this house during a dry season when the lake was low, then 25% of the way through construction, the lake gained 3 feet and the water was lapping over the foundation and washing it away.

        Millionaires put a house up in the mountains (fire burns up remeber?) and then they burn to the ground. I'm sorry they have lost all their things, their pictures and memories, but at some point they have to live up to where they are living. No reasonable insurance company should underwrite those homes, or if they are going to, they should be damn sure that the government or the home owners dont have a shake shingle roof on their home, and theres no dry brush etc for 500ft, things like that. That leaves plenty of room for trees, grass, and plants.

        (Oh so you know, I live way to close to the Claremont fires, but still well below them, and out of the flood plane too, little research saves us a ton of money on homeowners insurance. People 1/2 mile North of us were evacuated, people 1 mile north of us lost their homes. Hot warm ash fell on our house, but we clear the brush, we have a ceramic tile roof, and we were out there at 2am hosing it all down, just in case.)

        • Re:Only damage to the Dollar (Score:4, Insightful)

          by SixDimensionalArray ( 604334 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @02:23AM (#7335864)
          Eraser,

          I completely understand and agree with your point - I recently heard that 7 million homes (roughly half) in California are built in extreme fire danger locations (after all, much of California is/used to be desert). I also live in Claremont, and I've watched the fires burn dangerously close 2 times in the past few years.

          Here's my question, and I'll pose it to you and the rest of the Slashdot crowd. Ok, we all understand that it's silly to build these homes where they shouldn't go, but what happens when we have so much money that we can live in places we shouldn't? What happens, when we simply overpopulate an area and there ARE no places left to build but in these dangerous locations?

          Are we going to tell ordinary people who want basically what everyone else has (a normal home, in a decent neighborhood) that they can't have it because there's nowhere else for them to live? I mean, would YOU want to be that person who can't live somewhere because there's simply no more room left? (I'm just playing devil's advocate here)

          I'd love for somebody to answer that one... I for one think more urbanization would have been the answer (build UPWARDS instead of OUTWARDS) but it seems too many people are against it - they want their OWN space.

          What do you all think? At some point, something has to give...

          -6d
          • Only 6.3 billion people [census.gov] on the planet now, which will double over the next few decades, but the upside is that technology advances just as fast as populations do: exponentially.

            So, it'll just get easier and cheaper to build UPWARDS [takenaka.co.jp] (including space, once the elevators are built), OUTWARDS (onto the oceans which is 70% of Earth's surface area), DOWNWARDS (below the surface of land/water), and INWARDS (transhumans don't need to live in meatspace).

            --

          • In different parts of the world, it's the same thing with avalanches.

            Here in Norway, it gets cold during the winter. We have snow. Some valleys have quite a lot of avalanches. No suprises there - it's been that way for quite a long time.

            So what happens from time to time is that big avalanches happen, and all the newer house get hit. Houses that are a few hundred years old, or are built on places where there have been buildings for several hundred years, don't...


          • Just a quick point: what about California's severe water shortage problem way back when. It could happen again. Should everyone evacuate? I say no, it's too beautiful a place to not enjoy it, and life is always going to be full of risks. Just don't expect someone else to bail you out every time things don't go your way because of your risk taking.
          • People with the money to live in places that are unusual should spend some of that money on getting an honest assessment of the location and on measures to mitigate the danger before it happens. If you want to live on a lake, find out how high the water can get, and build higher. If you want to live in an area that burns periodically, find this out before you build the house, get yourself a buffer zone around your house, and (co-operating with local government) burn off the surrounding fuel so that it doesn
        • I agree, i have seen people build in the valley of fire near Los Angeles (where wild fires hit basically every couple of years, even before the homes were built) and on muddy slopes in the santa cruz mountains... then they are surprised they are get swept away with the next heavy rains.

          On fire control, i have seen a primitive yet incredibly effective way of doing that: farmers in the mountains of northern thailand burn down the mountain pretty much constantly during the dry season.

          There are fires on the m
          • One should keep in mind, though, that you can't always import these things easily, as climate, etc, plays a HUGE role in forest fires. For example, it's my understanding that Thailand is very humid. By contrast, the areas in California being affected by fires are incredibly dry right now. Moreover, the types of vegetation in the area, amount of rainfall and subsurface water, etc, play very large roles in the behavior of fire and our ability to control it. So don't assume that the techniques these Thai f
    • well... if any power plants burn down... i guess it's good that Cali doesn't support nuclear power plants... they could have a Civ2:CallToPower nuclear fall out zone to clean up...

      oh wait... boom [nucleartourist.com] boom [nei.org]

      well... looks like they lucked out this time :)

      • Re:Only damage to the Dollar (Score:5, Informative)

        by momerath2003 ( 606823 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @02:10AM (#7335814) Journal
        I guess it's good that the nuclear power plants of the design in the U.S CAN'T FREAKING CREATE FALLOUT! If you had to hide somewhere from a fire, the inside of a nuclear power plant would be just about the safest place. These things are built to take on hell.

        Just because you watched "Atomic Twister" on TBS Superstation doesn't mean that it's true, indicative of ANYTHING about nuclear power plants, or that if a fire got near a nuclear plant that "they could have a Civ2:CallToPower nuclear fall out zone to clean up."

        If there's anything that California, and the U.S. in general, needs, it's more nuclear plants. Or perhaps you don't remember the rolling blackouts of 2002 or whenever caused by a lack of power partially due to the fatally flawed, so-called "environmentally friendly" philosophy of California.

        But please. Before you start posting about the dangers to something about which you apparently haven't a clue, read up on it instead of basing your obviously limited knowledge from bad sci-fi movies.
    • These rampant fires may be wreaking havoc upon insurance companies, but just remember, it is all part of nature. This catastrophe serves to remind us humans we are part of nature, not above it.

      Despite how horrific they appear to be, they serve some beneficial role in the grand scheme of things.
      In nature forests burn every few decades.
      Governments devote a lot of resources to stamping out fires.
      The effect of these efforts is to increase the number of trees that haven't burned - yet.
      This guarantees that whe
      • And that is why the powers that be at the Burea of Land Management, Department of Interior, etc are starting to allow small to medium sized fires burn so long as the conditions are right to allow them to be contained. We are at the end of a half century plus legacy of bad forest management and we are paying the price, luckily our hindsight is teaching us things that should prevent the same mistakes from being made again. For instance the last two times I have been to the Grand Canyon there have been fires w

  • Deja vu (Score:2, Funny)

    by rolocroz ( 625853 )
    It's really strange to see all this about a solar flare, when this [slashdot.org] was just published. Weird.
    • Perhaps the effects solar flare have already struck, causing disruptions in the space-time continuum, which resulted in the posting of a duplicate story on /. ... then again, maybe not, and it's just your ordinary day here.
    • Haven't you seen "Frequency". No? Good, you are lucky. Otherwise, I'm going to contact timothy on my HAM, and tell him to stop smoking. Chick-flic sci-fi at its best.
  • ...how far down the US will the Aurora Borealis be showing?

  • you know... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by spacefem ( 443435 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @12:47AM (#7335518) Homepage
    there are nice things to look at outside, too. sometimes the smaller side of nature is just as memorizing as the big picture. I fear for myself when I spend days looking at the world on a monitor. eh, that's what geekhood is all about.

  • I wish .... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Argofickyusilf ( 719887 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @12:56AM (#7335565)
    that the public could realise how useful NASA is. If they could see the services that they offer, maybe it would be "politically correct" for Congrees to give them the funding that they need.
    • Ah yes. If only that were the case. I myself forget where the news agencies get their information when they report the weather or disasters.
      NASA is probably the only government agency that's underappreciated, underfunded, undrerused, and provides the most value to us taxpayers. Maybe the FAA had them beat. I don't know.

  • SXI online, but too late (Score:5, Informative)

    by barakn ( 641218 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @12:56AM (#7335567)
    New images of the xray sun [noaa.gov] are being taken by the SXI imager once again. Use of the imager had stopped because of an unexpected over-current problem [noaa.gov]. The SXI team decided that they could safely operate the instrument at a lower voltage, albeit at the expense of a lower signal to noise ratio. The decision was hastened by the dramatic [150.144.30.101] solar [150.144.30.101] events [150.144.30.101] today.

  • Before and after pictures of So. Cal. fires (Score:5, Interesting)

    by adambehnke ( 719862 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @12:57AM (#7335570)
    You can see a pretty cool before picture (note, by before, I mean _yesterday_)...

    Before [nasa.gov]

    And now, check out the after (today):

    After [nasa.gov]

  • Glad we have a magnetosphere (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If not, we would be Tater Tots in about 10 hours or so. Really, though, without an electromagnetic field, our planet would pretty much be blasted by the "solar wind" to the point that Mars or Venus would look like a vacation area compared to that version of hell. Another point not to forget is the ozone shield which filters out most UV radiation, where no shield was good at first (to cause mutations into higher lifeforms, like plants, but is now bad) but now is essential to not irradiate humans into extinct

  • Is it just me? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Valar ( 167606 )
    Or did we just manage to /. nasa (ok, so this page at nasa, but still)? Or is it normally this unresponsive? If they can't take on /. and survive, maybe they shouldn't be put in charge of so much sensitive equipment/rocket fuel...
  • CA [slackworks.com] -- really big
    Isabella [slackworks.com] -- not so big

  • Another Zoomed out Picture of the Fires (Score:4, Informative)

    by dapantzman ( 595438 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @01:18AM (#7335646)
    This page [nasa.gov]has a similar picture. It is from NASA's SEAWIFS project. It shows the same fires in a larger area and zoomed out to give a better perspective. Click on the smaller picture to get a gigantic version of the smaller one.
  • under an hour after being posted, the site is already slower than dial-up... side of slashdot, anyone?

  • Northern lights to be seen as far south as Ark. (Score:3, Informative)

    by ducomputergeek ( 595742 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @01:28AM (#7335677)
    At least that's what the local weather guru said on the 10PM news. Said it should be sometime between 12PM and 2AM CST (GMT -6). Despite having an early meeting with clients tomorrow, I am staying up and a awaiting the show...

  • HOLY SHIT!!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Paladin144 ( 676391 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @01:35AM (#7335694) Homepage
    Watching the video of the solar flare just about made me brown my pants!!

    Uh, if tomorrow's the apocalypse, it's been a good run, y'all. It's been a lotta fun.

    "Since the dawn of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun!" - Mr. Burns.

    Now it looks like the sun will destroy us! I'll shield my computer with my ashen body so that it might survive.

  • I know I risk being offtopic, but why would it look like milk [wordreference.com] :-)?

    I still can't understand why so many people in the U S of A (yes, it's the only country so far where I've heard such an abbreviation) keep calling milk [saanendoah.com] what in fact is caffelatte [oregonstate.edu]...

    • Re:the biggest "latte" ? (Score:4, Informative)

      by pboulang ( 16954 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @03:00AM (#7335983)
      Ok, how else would you shorten the term "Cafe Latte"? The simple fact is, on most menus the two syllables of latte reference a single item, so that shortening makes sense. Also, the fact that the word latte is NOT used in normal conversation to be "milk" also makes it unique in almost any context, not just ordering a drink.

      What *I* can't understand is why people think that reference books (even Internet ones) are up to date and provide indebatable evidence or proof. They are at best a snapshot of word meanings by a single author or group. The simple fact is that language constantly changes and sometimes you end up with terms that should be opposites (flammable and inflammable) but actually mean the same thing.

      Since you seem interested, I refer you to this periodical [wordorigins.org] or even better, this public radio [kpbs.org] site and specifically the letter [kpbs.org] that people send in and the responses. You may or may not like it.

  • Physics of Flare-Induced Power Outages (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rjthomas61 ( 310385 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @01:53AM (#7335753)
    Article on solar flares and power outages. [engineeringmatters.com]

    "If (when) this flow of charged particles and embedded magnetic field collides with the Earth, it dramatically disrupts Earth's geomagnetic field and ionosphere, changing the terrestrial magnetic fields, and therefore causing currents to flow in the upper ionosphere, ...in the earth itself, and in long distance conductors. The interaction of the [Coronal Mass Ejection] with the Earth is referred to as a geomagnetic storm."

    "This current can cause saturation of the large power transformers at either end of the transmission line, creating a host of undesirable effects. ... Typical undesirable effects range from voltage regulation difficulties, to highly nonlinear sinusoidal primary and secondary currents, resulting in circuit breaker tripping; to creation of local hot spots within the transformer, resulting in transformer failure. ... The effects of [Geomagnetically Induced Currents] were dramatically demonstrated during March 1989, when GIC caused a cascading failure in the Quebec Power system, putting nearly nine million customers in the dark, in less than 90 seconds."

    (Note that this first page [engineeringmatters.com] is a direct link to a frame, the second [engineeringmatters.com] through sixth [engineeringmatters.com] frames are accessible by the "next" tags in the right-hand corners.)
  • what kind of puny setup do you have? you need to get a man's desktop--I'm talking big. A real man would take two 15" monitors over a single 17" any day, and over a 19" every day except perhaps the sabbath. Anything less than 2000 pixels wide is just weak. Only problem is, it's damn tough to find a background. You'll have to re-scan your ass in a higher resolution if you don't want the jaggies, and nobody wants the jaggies on their ass, mon!

  • Well shit. (Score:3, Funny)

    by edunbar93 ( 141167 ) on Wednesday October 29, 2003 @04:07AM (#7336129)
    From the article:
    Today's flare is listed as an X17.2, with an X20 being the most intense flare ever observed in that time. People living in Quebec, Canada, may recall that in March 1989 an X15 solar storm was strong enough to knock out the region's power grid.

    Our ADSL network and our mail server have been really flaky lately (for other reasons, I presume). I don't think that our customers are going to believe us if this causes problems with our network.
  • This time McNealy has gone way too far... He really has to go.
  • You couldn't see a solar flare "as soon as it erupted". It takes about 8 minutes for the light to reach Earth from the Sun. So if the Sun went supernova right now, you'd still have time to read this comment and make a coffee before you knew anything about it :-)
    • Being even more pedantic, there's no absolute frame of reference for time, so there's not really such a thing as 'right now' over astronomical distances. I think.

      You probably know better than me. I'll shut up now.

  • as soon as it errupted (so to speak). No, we see the flare a few minutes after it occurs thanks to the limit on the speed of light. And I think a flare is detectable and visible without a satellite. A big one is detectable by the sudden improvement or detoriation in radio quality.

  • Great flares of Aurora (Score:2, Informative)

    by djtripp ( 468558 )
    Well, I just drove out 50 miles east of Anchorage toward Portage Glacier and found a beautiful display of the Aurora Borealis. First it was a bit green, then later on, I had curtains of bright green, purple and red cascading around me. It was fantastic, and it was only 2:30am, the full blown impact hasn't even hit yet... tomorrow night should be nice.
  • Got this in the mail this morning. The CME has hit. HF radio communications are in da gutta!

    CME HAS HIT. Kp index threshold was
    reached on 2003 Oct 29 0839 UTC.

  • http://www.informit.com/content/images/0672322803/ 0672322803.jpg
  • From space.com

    "The coronal mass ejection is one in a series sent out by two huge sunspots, the largest pair to grace the Sun at one time in recent memory. Sunspot 486 was responsible for this blast."

    I knew those 486 machines we have been binning would have their revenge one day..

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