Space Weather

[Jherrith]

SUNSET SKY SHOW: When the sun goes down tonight, step outside and look west. Venus is approaching Castor and Pollux, the brightest stars of Gemini. On June 24th, the trio will form an almost perfect Euclidean line not far above the horizon: sky map.

[Aelin]

Too late for sunset here. But we have hills between us and the horizon, so And we had clouds a large part of the day.

[thelufias]

Want to take a viewing trip to outer space....Take a trip to the Spaceweather Realtime Image Gallery

[Jherrith]

INTERPLANETARY SHOCK WAVE SPARKS AURORAS: This was not in the forecast. A low-amplitude interplanetary shock wave (data) hit Earth's magnetic field during the early hours of June 30th, sparking mid-summer auroras over Canada:



Catalin Tapardel photographed the display from the Municipal District of Opportunity (#17) in Alberta. "I caught the auroras hovering just above an expanse of noctilucent clouds," says Tapardel.

We don't know where this shock wave came from. It might be the early arrival of the June 27th CME, originally expected July 1st, or perhaps a different stealthy CME that "flew under the radar" when it left the sun. If it's the latter, another jolt could occur in the next 24 hours.

[Jherrith]

ELLERMAN BOMBS: Bombs are going off around sunspot AR2835. Ellerman Bombs. Philippe Tosi photographed dozens of them yesterday from his backyard observatory in Nîmes, France. Click on the image below to see the entire sunspot; a handful of the bomb-blasts are circled:



Ellerman bombs are magnetic explosions about one-millionth as powerful as true solar flares. They are named after physicist Ferdinand Ellerman who studied the tiny blasts in the early 20th century. Of course, "tiny" is relative. A single Ellerman bomb releases about 1026 ergs of energy--equal to about 100,000 World War II atomic bombs.

Why are these explosions happening? This magnetic map of AR2835 provides the answer:



Blue/green is magnetic north (+). Red/yellow is magnetic south (-). Credit: NASA/SDO

Note the ragged mixture of yellow and green around the periphery of the sunspot's primary core. These are magnetic fields of opposite polarity bumping together. Such a mixture is explosive. Ellerman bombs mark the points where magnetic reconnection is taking place. If this mixing continues, we could see a real solar flare soon

[Jherrith]

A CME IS COMING (MAYBE): A CME that left the sun three days ago might sideswipe Earth on July 1st. New modeling suggests a 30% chance of impact. The hit, if it occurs, won't be head on. The CME is traveling mostly away from our planet, so any contact would be with the CME's flank. (Wait. Did this CME already arrive?)

[thelufias]

Gone and done with LOL

[Jherrith]

CME IMPACT POSSIBLE THIS WEEKEND: A minor coronal mass ejection (CME) is expected to hit Earth this weekend. It left the sun on June 29th, propelled toward us by a B7-class solar flare.The impact will probably be too weak to cause a geomagnetic storm, but high-latitude auroras are possible on July 3rd or 4th.

[Jherrith]

FIRST X-FLARE IN 4 YEARS: A new sunspot emerged during the early hours of July 3rd and promptly exploded, producing the first X-class solar flare since Sept. 2017. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the extreme ultraviolet flash:



Today's explosion registered X1.5 on the Richter Scale of Solar Flares

A pulse of X-rays briefly ionized the top of Earth's atmosphere, causing a shortwave radio blackout over the Atlantic Ocean: blackout map. Mariners, aviators, and amateur radio operators may have noticed unusual propagation effects below 30 MHz just after 1429 UT

The source of this flare is an un-numbered sunspot now growing near the sun's northwestern limb. Yesterday it did not even exist, highlighting the unpredictability of solar activity.

[thelufias]

I always enjoy reading about the solar activity....and how at times we get surprised or concerned ....