What is happening to the Sun?

Well - it keeps getting better every day! But I sure hope this one is a technical glitch:



Because they normally look like this:




But either way - check out these pretty flares

And while I'm gobbeling up space here, check out this interesting news from spaceweather.com:

"X-FLARE! Earth-orbiting satellites detected a powerful X2-class solar flare at 0140 UT on July 15th (6:40 p.m. PDT on July 14th). The explosion, which came from sunspot 649, did not hurl coronal mass ejection (CME) toward Earth."

"SOLAR OUTLOOK: Solar activity will likely remain high for days to come. Sunspot 649 has a tangled "beta-gamma-delta" magnetic field that harbors energy for X-class solar flares like the one that erupted on July 15th."

"Another big sunspot is hidden on the far side of the sun. Solar rotation will carry it over the sun's eastern limb, and into plain view, as soon as July 17th."

"MYSTERY METEOR SHOWER? Sea-rescuers were on alert in Finland on July 12th when reports of emergency flares poured in from the Gulf of Bothnia. They soon realized that no ship was in distress. The flares were "meteors." - These must have been from that pretty little mass that was showing up on the SWAN images last week! Check that out here

Man I LOVE THIS STUFF!

Originally posted by badkitty
"Another big sunspot is hidden on the far side of the sun. Solar rotation will carry it over the sun's eastern limb, and into plain view, as soon as July 17th."

Well, it's pretty normal sized.


I just came back from Finland's Astronomical associations year's main event and we followed it when that sunspot come to visible side.

If anyone wants pics about launchs of "minirockets" made of cardboard which use commercially made small gun powder rocket motors I could post those. (and one video)

I was looking at this site about solar activity...

www.dxlc.com...

And was wondering how bad coronal holes are.

maybe the suns going to blow up or something because the light coming from the picture is like super lighted and the regular one is just orange......bye bye were all dead

I highly doubt the sun is about to go nova on us and collapse. Chances are the sun is just doing that voodoo that it does so well.

If I had to wager anything, I'd just guess that the sun is just flaring up.

Perhaps it too is upset that there won't be any more futurama episodes ever.

Originally posted by Mynaeris
During the recent Transit of Venus on 8th June the Sun was totally clear. Now no more than a week later its riddled with sunspots, with an M-class solar flare on the 13th. Currently there are no less than 4 sunspots/groups on the sun. Most being larger than the planet Venus?

Big sunspots 634 and 635 have "beta-gamma" magnetic fields that harbor energy for M-class solar flares. If there are flares in the days ahead, the explosions would likely be Earth-directed. M-class flares are medium-sized; they generally cause brief radio blackouts that affect Earth's polar regions.

Anybody have any ideas on the matter?

Hello, Mynaeris:

There is a lot happening right now with the sun. It's supposed to be out of its 11-year sunspot cycle since 2000, but it's not, it's worse!

You just join some posts that Mark and I have going on this at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

We have been discussing this for a time now. It's called Sun Watch 2004. I live in TX and during the summer of 2004, we had more freak storms, cooler weather that we've ever had. You wouldn't believe how much rain some places had that weren't too far from where I live. Like 13 inches overnight! Never seen this before. Where Mark lives in England, I think, they had tons of rain. Then he had gotten bad sunburns when never happened before. So yes, the sun is/has been going bonkers. The sun affects our earth weather.

Tiza