The Sun Unleashes Coronal Mass Ejection At Earth 220
astroengine writes "Yesterday morning, at 08:55 UT, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory detected a C3-class flare erupt inside a sunspot cluster. 100,000 kilometers away, deep within the solar atmosphere (the corona), an extended magnetic field filled with cool plasma forming a dark ribbon across the face of the sun (a feature known as a 'filament') erupted at the exact same time. It seems very likely that both eruptions were connected after a powerful shock wave produced by the flare destabilized the filament, causing the eruption. A second solar observatory, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, then spotted a huge coronal mass ejection blast into space, straight in the direction of Earth. Solar physicists have calculated that this magnetic bubble filled with energetic particles should hit Earth on August 3, so look out for some intense aurorae — a solar storm is coming."
Free Aurora Alerts (Score:5, Informative)
If you want a warning when auroras are likely to be occuring without paying Spaceweather for alerts (so you can scurry outside and look), check out the NOAA's SWPC mailing lists [noaa.gov]. Go for the K-Index lists, and sign up for all those that apply for your location.
To figure out which minimum k-index results in visible aurora from your location, check out this helpful page [berkeley.edu]; just enter in your latitude and longitude, and it'll give you your "magnetic latitude"; match that up with a k-index using the table, and you know which mailing lists to sign up for.
If your phone does email, you can get the alerts anywhere; if your phone doesn't but your provider has an email-to-sms gateway, you could just forward emails for the same effect. :)
Re:Free Aurora Alerts (Score:4, Informative)
You might also like the Propfire Firefox Add-on [n0hr.com] which will give you SFI, A/K, and SSN in the bottom of your browser.
Re:So should I unplug all my stuff or not? (Score:4, Informative)
Before anyone gets all pissy... yes, the CME comes in the form of energized protons and pico-wave X-Rays, so they are more destructive to human tissue than normal sunlight. But given that the Earth survived a Y+ level (1000-10,000 times more powerful) in 1859 with no one keeling over dead, I think we're safe.
Re:clarification requested. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Free Aurora Alerts (Score:3, Informative)
While your at it, if you don't know your latitude and longitude you can go to try http://www.travelmath.com/city/Toledo,+OH [travelmath.com]
Q: Does this make me a Karma whore?
Having RTFA (Score:3, Informative)
Re:space station (Score:3, Informative)
I would think that a coronal mass ejection hitting the ISS would be much like a tidal wave hitting a twig. It's the atmosphere that diverts the particles, which is what the auroras are. The ISS wouldn't do a whole lot if it were in the path.
Re:So should I unplug all my stuff or not? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So should I unplug all my stuff or not? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Straight towards Earth? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So should I unplug all my stuff or not? (Score:3, Informative)
I *reallly* hope it's all nothing and not this http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/21jan_severespaceweather/ [nasa.gov]
Re:So should I unplug all my stuff or not? (Score:3, Informative)
You need to upgrade to a lead foil hat from the usual tin foil noggin protector to stop the cosmic rays from discombobulating your brain cells.
Aurora pics outside of NYC from the last CME (Score:3, Informative)
http://photo.omnistep.com/aurora11072004/ [omnistep.com]
I heard they were seen as far south as the Carolina's.
erm (Score:3, Informative)
This is not news...or news-worthy (Score:5, Informative)
Here are the classifications, and a C3 means few if any noticeable impact on Earth. It is the X class flares that we need to be concerned about:
http://www.spaceweather.com/glossary/flareclasses.html [spaceweather.com]
Re:So should I unplug all my stuff or not? (Score:3, Informative)
If this isn't on the scale of the Solar Superstorm of 1859, then we're probably fine.
And it's probably not on that scale, because if it was, then it probably would have hit days before Slashdot heard about it.
On a side note, it's gonna be lulz if tomorrow's day of the TeraGrid conference is affected by this. There's a programming contest scheduled for tomorrow, so we need computers and networking. :D