Earth-Directed Eruption

Earth-Directed Eruption

spaceweather.com

On Saturday, Oct. 17th, starting around 18:24 UT, a spotless active region in the sun's southern hemisphere erupted, hurling a faint coronal mass ejection (CME) in the general direction of Earth.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Definitely breaking news, as well as a bit concerning!

Spaceweather.com also posted a quick movie of the ejection recorded by SOHO, can be seen at :

spaceweather.com...


Let's see... if it's on a path to earth, these CME's would usually take.. 3/4 days? Am I remembering that correctly?


Phage?


Anyhow, thought you guys should know!

spaceweather.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 18-10-2009 by Jomina]

YIKERS

What do you think this will mean for us? Besides some realy cool auroras.

Has this happened before?

reply to post by mrsdudara


Depending on the intensity, either just really cool aurors, or it could affect satellites in orbit around the earth and some weather.

Originally posted by mrsdudara
YIKERS

What do you think this will mean for us? Besides some realy cool auroras.

That's about it.

Has this happened before?

Many, many times.

Nothing to worry about

reply to post by Jomina


Yeah, nothing to worry about really. These eruptions happen all the time. Occasionally they are directed towards the earth but unless they are very powerful X-class flares, they will cause nothing more than very impressive arouras.

Originally posted by Jomina

Let's see... if it's on a path to earth, these CME's would usually take.. 3/4 days? Am I remembering that correctly?

EARTH-DIRECTED ERUPTION: On Saturday, Oct. 17th, starting around 18:24 UT, a spotless active region in the sun's southern hemisphere erupted, hurling a faint coronal mass ejection (CME) in the general direction of Earth. SOHO's extreme UV telescope recorded this movie of the blast. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras on Oct. 19th or 20th when the CME arrives.

Get the popcorn! Could this CME effect communications? I have just enough knowledge in this subject to be dangerous..

Typing while you all were posting,,

Question-
How are CMEs measured and can these measurements be done before any possible disruptions done to the satilites?

reply to post by geo1066


It's called the K Index:

www.swpc.noaa.gov...

You can find it down the left hand side of the page the OP linked to.


It's currently at 0

reply to post by geo1066


If a CME is big enough, it has the potential of knocking out communications and causing no small amount of havok. However, it'd have to be a pretty massive one to do so, and indications on this one shows that it's not going to be drastic.

Which is good news

Probably we'll see a heck of a light show from it, and that's always great. Fireworks are awesome



What interests me is how it's come about, considering the low activity of the sun, and all that. Might be an indication that bigger things are gearing up in the ol sun once again!


No doom here, but of great interest, at least to me lol

Originally posted by Jomina
reply to post by geo1066

What interests me is how it's come about, considering the low activity of the sun, and all that. Might be an indication that bigger things are gearing up in the ol sun once again!

That's what interests me too. It has been very quiet lately hasn't it? And then this.. so, does this happen regularly?

Well would it not effect the Earth, since the magnetic field around the earth is weakining? Remebr we do have that so called hole in the atmosphere!!

reply to post by Iamonlyhuman


The sun is supposed to be coming out of it's minimum, so we should really be seeing a whole lot more right now.

The space weather article isn't talking this up at all.

On Saturday, Oct. 17th, starting around 18:24 UT, a spotless active region in the sun's southern hemisphere erupted, hurling a faint coronal mass ejection (CME) in the general direction of Earth.

[edit on 18/10/09 by Chadwickus]

Originally posted by Laurauk
Well would it not effect the Earth, since the magnetic field around the earth is weakining? Remebr we do have that so called hole in the atmosphere!!

Magnetosphere. There was a hole detected in the magnetosphere, just so we don't get things confused.
As I understand it we don't really know if the hole is still there as the spacecraft detected it as it flew through, but maybe some of the more knowledgeable members can shed some light on this.

It does seem a bit unusual that this CME comes from a spotless region though. I believe that the norm is that these eruptions emanate from sunspots, but again I'm no expert so I'd love to hear what others have to say about this.

The sun does seem to be starting up again and it will certainly be very interesting to follow.
The timing sure is interesting...

Originally posted by sdcigarpig
reply to post by mrsdudara

 

Depending on the intensity, either just really cool aurors, or it could affect satellites in orbit around the earth and some weather.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't we have already seen the effects of this? I mean there is a delay in satellite feeds, and I doubt our satellite feeds can outrun a solar event (given that light has to have time to travel to the satellite lens, and then the satellite uses a slower than light radio signal to beam it back to earth.)

[edit on 18-10-2009 by yellowcard]

Originally posted by yellowcard

Originally posted by sdcigarpig
reply to post by mrsdudara

 

Depending on the intensity, either just really cool aurors, or it could affect satellites in orbit around the earth and some weather.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't we have already seen the effects of this? I mean there is a delay in satellite feeds, and I doubt our satellite feeds can outrun a solar event (given that light has to have time to travel to the satellite lens, and then the satellite uses a slower than light radio signal to beam it back to earth.)

[edit on 18-10-2009 by yellowcard]

Light has little or nothing to do with this coronal mass ejection sure the light hit us ages ago (hence why they could see the flare happened), but the stuff the flares made of takes time to arrive. The sun isnt just a giant light, its made of lots and lots of matter. Its the matter that's harmful.

Could be wrong but thats what I think.

[edit on 18-10-2009 by BigfootNZ]

Where will the auroras be seen if there are any? I really want to see some pretty lights.

Yeah, this is no big deal. There would be a real alert if this was something to worry about. I have friends in the electrical industry that keep an ear on this stuff. Id say keep watchin though...

Normally its a few days until we see anything hit us. That means in like a day or so we will have a bunch of people posting charts.

Originally posted by Chadwickus
reply to post by Iamonlyhuman

 

The sun is supposed to be coming out of it's minimum, so we should really be seeing a whole lot more right now.

"supposed to" assumes that the Sun's activity is a well known phenomena...

it's not.

The last Solar Max was Mar 2000 at a monthly smoothed index of 120.8. That was about nine years ago.

Over on the left panel of Spaceweather is an interesting bit of info. It reads:

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 15 days
2009 total: 227 days (79%)
Since 2004: 738 days
Typical Solar Min: 485 days

And you have a rather disturbing piece of info over at NASA:

"Personally, I'm betting that sunspots are coming back," says researcher Matt Penn of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson, Arizona. But, he allows, "there is some evidence that they won't."

Penn's colleague Bill Livingston of the NSO has been measuring the magnetic fields of sunspots for the past 17 years, and he has found a remarkable trend. Sunspot magnetism is on the decline.

science.nasa.gov...

Specifically, the intensity of the magnetic field in the flux tubes has been declining. Once it drops below about 1500 gauss (per the article) you don't have a strong enough field to evacuate the flux tube of plasma... and generate a Sunspot.

( See -> Sunquakes: Probing the Interior of the Sun, J. B. Zirker )

Other murmurings at NASA are looking at maybe a Dalton sized minimum... if we are lucky.

In a picture.. okay, a graph, you can see the end of Cycle 23 and the beginning... well, what SIDC claims as the beginning, of Cycle 24. And, where we should be at if their declared start is actually the start.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/7a5e58b475c4.jpg[/atsimg]



[edit on 18-10-2009 by RoofMonkey]