GeorgeWX
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Posts posted by GeorgeWX
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Sunspot 1429 has been letting off a series of flares overnight, the biggest of which so far is an X-1 at 4.10 UTC. The CME currently visible on Soho images appears to result from an earlier event.
As the spot is still not fully Earth-facing, the probability is that any CME will deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetosphere.
The cme relating to the X class flare can be seen on Lasco c2, still nothing on c3. However there is no doubt about this one hitting us sometime during Wednesday.
Now things become interesting as we are already expecting a small disturbance from a CH stream and a glancing hit from the M2 flare cme. All solar forecasters predict minor storming late tomorrow or during Wednesday as a result.
Adding the cme from the X class flare into the mix will cause a long duration active geomagnetic field starting late on Tuesday with repeated minor to major storm episodes through Wednesday and into Thursday. In terms of planetery KP we should see a six or seven. As for geomagnetic storming locally we could see the k-index reach 8. During such conditions aurora would be visible across pretty much all of the UK and Ireland.
NOAA space weather forecasters will publish their thoughts tonight at 10pm.
Below is a movie of the blast seen from Lasco c2. Two cme's can be seen leaving the surface, the first comes from a C class flare and the second from the X1 flare.
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Most recent solar flux is at 116 and todays sunspot number is 54.
The last 24 hours we see multiple C class flares and one LDE M class flare all coming from 1429. Out of all the flares we see two cme's, the first involved a long filament connected to 1429 and the eruption was concurrant with a low C class flare. The second cme is the result of the M2 flare and left the solar surface at a quick pace, possibly 1000km/s. The first cme looks like a miss, it does look like the edge of the second cme will brush past us according to the most recent Lasco c3 images, a very wide eruption considering the blast location at 65E.
During the next 24 hours there will continue to be multiple C class flares from 1429 with a continued possibility of M class flaring and maybe even X class flaring. There is also likely to be the odd C class flare from 1428 during the next 24 hours as this region has shown some recent development.
1429 and new sunspot region
Today we see an earth facing coronal hole positioned in the southern hemisphere. The wind stream from this CH will likely arrive at earth late on Tuesday and unsettle our geomagnetic field with a possibility for active periods, I don't expect UK latitude aurora from this event alone but combining with a possible flank hit from the above mentioned cme, there may be a chance of minor to moderate geomagnetic storming during Wednesday and maybe into Thursday (best wait and see what the experts say on that one!!!).
CH506
Beyond then and worth note is a very large mid-latitude coronal hole that is emerging over the eastern limb today. If this CH maintains it's size and structure when it becomes earth facing on Saturday/Sunday, it will inflict minor geomagnetic storming once it's wind stream arrives on 13/03 or 14/03.
Side on view of the sun from Stereo B showing CH on limb
Today's sun
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Hi Yamkin
I suspect your source might be getting unnecessarily excited - that flare and CME were not Earth-directed, as the active region was just over the solar limb as seen from here, and are unlikely to affect us. The Stereo craft (can't remember whether it's A or http://cdn.nwstatic.co.uk/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cool.png that's that side of the Sun might notice, but its controllers have had plenty of warning and can take precautions.
crepuscular ray, My source is Space.com This is an update
I think both of you are right. Yes this movie is on space.com and it does say that this event could 'light up northern skies' and the title does say that satellites will be affected.
At the moment there is a R1 radio blackout but this is relatively minor (we had several of these during 2011). I really don't see the cme released during the flare reaching our magnetosphere, it was a wild miss, Venus should take a direct hit though. The chances of northern lights as a result of this eruption are almost zero.
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Today's sun
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Another day with a quiet sun. Only two small spots can be seen and the solar flux is at 103. www.spaceweather.com
This is now turning to be a lengthy quiet spell which is remarkable considering we are not far from the solar maximum!
Karyo
You're not wrong Karyo, remember things went quieter somewhere around the start of Decenber, and here we are at the start of March, the lowest NOAA sunspot number of just 22 on Wednesday followed by two days at 24. The region responsible for the recent M3 flare that CR has just mentioned is likely (on it's own) to boost sn above 60 and flux above 120.
So are we near the end of a three month solar depression, the ending of which would be marked with a peak that was higher than the previous peak we had a few months back, or are we really entering a long quiet solar spell reminisent of the Dalton cycle. We'll know the answer for sure by the end of the year.
The new sunspot appearing over the eastern limb is a very active and compact region. Already we see the M3 flare and cme yesterday but was still behind the limb when this occured. Just in the last few hours has the full active region revealed itself. The next 24 hours we should expect multiple C-class flares with more M-class flaring possible. An isolated X-class flare can't be ruled out.
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Hopefully some earth directed activity for next weekend as I'll be in one of the best UK dark sky locations!
Fingers crossed, there may not be much flare activity but sol sure is letting off some steam at the moment!
Your dark sky spot, somewhere in D&G? I head out there every chance I get for some peace and quiet as well as a bit of stargazing, can't beat it!
NASA ALERT - INCOMING CME TO HIT EARTH 26TH FEBRUARY 2012
Hey Yam nice upload, the part with Lasco c3 shows the wrong cme though, that was the blast off the SE limb late in the day. The cme first appears in the Lasco images during the early hours of 24/02. C3 shows very little of the earth directed cloud due to the concurrent northward blast 'blinding' the camera so to speak.
edit: my mistake its cor2 you have on the vid, the relevant cme first appears in cor2 late on 23/02. Big blast heading north with second cloud heading towards earth around 4am. Visible on A and B.
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According to spaceweather.com the Goddard Space Weather Lab have issued a forecast of a possible CME impact tomorrow (26th) at 13.30 UTC (+/- 7 hrs), which might cause up to G2 class geomagnetic storms. Nothing serious, just possible high-latitude disturbances, precautionary measures to perhaps put satellites into safer modes and aurorae possibly visible in the US as far south as New York (so unlikely to be visible from anywhere but the north of the UK because of the position of the magnetic north pole, if anything happens).
The spaceweather.com report doesn't mention whether this is related to yesterday morning's events, but it seems probable.
Nice arrival time, a little earlier than most other predictions out there but these guys were spot on when forecasting the last cme arrival time. A cme impact more towards 6-7pm tomorrow night would suit us nicely.
The potential southern extent of visible aurora due to this cme passage is very hard to forecast, it really depends on the density of the incoming cloud as well as what sort of additional energy the coronal hole has given in propelling the cme towards us.
Movie of filament eruption in blue wavelength (3.4MB)
Composite wavelength (3.8MB)
The filament can be seen snaking across from close to centre disk to the east before turning northwards and disappearing over the limb. A truly monster sized filamentr eruption.
There is yet another flareless cme that can be seen leaving the sun late last night, the source being a region near the eastern limb .The eruption can be seen heading southwards which makes a nice change to all this activity we have seen in the northern hemisphere. The culprit could be newly numbered sunspot 1424 but more imagery will need to come through to confirm source and also direction. It does look like it will miss us. There is an enhanced stream of protons hitting earth as a result of this eruption, however not enough to reach storm thresholds.
The source of this cme was not 1424 but another unstable filament, this one located on the south eastern quadrant.
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SDO are yet to share those sun pics from 24/02, there's a short blurb on their website explaining how the system is offline through no fault of their own. Lascos are finally up now and a faint cme can be seen heading in our direction.
It does seem that one filament managed to produce two eruptions just minutes apart with a large eruption heading north away from the sun and a second burst heading in our general direction.
Without SDO imagery its hard to see the exact aftermath of the eruption. Another satellite up there named 'GOES' has a live feed showing low resolution images of the sun. From there, huge post eruptive loops develop across almost one half of the sun as all the material that didn't escape comes crashing back down on the solar surface. The hi-res imagery from SDO will show this in immense detail and will probably become the most visually stimulating solar eruption we have seen so far in SC24.
All solar forecasts out there (apart from spaceweather.com) are predicting minor storm periods for 27/02 as a result of this cme passing us.
There is yet another flareless cme that can be seen leaving the sun late last night, the source being a region near the eastern limb .The eruption can be seen heading southwards which makes a nice change to all this activity we have seen in the northern hemisphere. The culprit could be newly numbered sunspot 1424 but more imagery will need to come through to confirm source and also direction. It does look like it will miss us. There is an enhanced stream of protons hitting earth as a result of this eruption, however not enough to reach storm thresholds.
Sunspot number at 47 and solar flux at 109.
Today's sun
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Very little additional data has come through since 7am this morning. New Lasco images are now appearing but they have omitted the interesting bit, there's no new images from SDO since 7am (see video above).
The only data coming through is low-res beacon data from the Stereo duo. Based on that data alone there does appear to be a cme heading in our general direction. Incredibly slow at 450 or maybe 500km/s at most but this may get enhanced en-route by the high speed wind stream from a coronal hole that opened during and immediately after the eruption.
If all the above turns out to be correct then we should expect a period of (at least) minor geomagnetic storming sometime during 27/02 with the coronal hole influence close behind causing just active conditions once it becomes the dominant force.
NOAA issue their nightly space weather forecast at 10pm here, these guys are likely to have the most recent imagery at their disposal so I look forward to their analysis.
Spaceweather.com have stepped forward with their prediction and they go for a miss.
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Until George can do some spectacular movies this evening, here's an indication of the size of one of the flares/CMEs. This one doesn't look Earth-directed, but I'll be happy to be proved wrong.
The still image you post is one of the prior cme's from the NE quadrant heading off into space. I agree that this particular blast is likely to miss us but the event I speak about will not appear in the Lascos for a good few hours yet.
I'm pretty confident that his huge eruption will head our way.
Here's a little movie of where we are at the now, the sequence begins at midnight and ends at 7am, the last few frames you can see the filament beginning to pop.
It's apparently HD quality, give it a few seconds to load
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In the last 5 hours there has been some quite amazing solar imagery coming in. The last 36 hour period we see two filament eruptions from the far north east quadrant (top left of the sun). One of the eruptions was very bright, both of them incredibly slow and both of them unlikely to be geo-effective.
But this same corner of the sun has really woken up in the last few hours.
There is a HUGE filament in the process of erupting and a massive coronal hole has appeared as if from nowhere as a direct result of this highly buoyant activity. It's far too early to say anything more with certainty as this event is still ongoing. I will attach a couple of the images showing what I'm talking about.
Goes SXI, huge filament upper left and large coronal hole appearing.
Two images from SDO, the first taken around 12 hours ago before the event commenced.
And the most recent snapshot clearly shows the departing filament and huge coronal hole opening.
My hunch on this one is we will have a large and dense cme with a trajectory that includes earth, I'll pop back on this evening with some movies showing this incredible event in full.
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Absolutely complacent, no doubt about it.
The top priority location for investment on protecting the infrastructure would be the highlands, it's where the threat from EMP's and intense geomagnetic storming is greatest in the UK. Does anyone here see the UK government invensting billions up there .... no me neither.
The smart way to protect ourselves (the entire world) from such events is to club together a big pot of cash and build a satellite capable of measuring the solar wind then sending the data to us in real time, a little bit like what Nasa's ace satellite currently does. Where Ace fails though is the incredibly short warning time it provides which would be just 20 minutes for the sort of event that will affect infrastructure around the world. I dont think 20 minutes is enough to get the message out.
We need a replacement that will not be positioned 1 million miles away from earth like Ace is, but 10, 20 or even 30 million miles away so we get at least a few hours notice of a potential catastrophe. That way, operators of power grids, airlines and others who rely on a stable magnetic field can take measures to protect what we have.
I can't see a more logical or cost effective way of protecting us all.
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Yesterday I discovered something of interest about the Aurorawatch magnetometer (the favoured device for detecting geomagnetic storms over the UK).
Some regulars on here may recall me saying some time ago that the aurora alert system on the aurorawatch website was rubbish, so rubbish that I've never signed up for the alerts in the 7 years I've used the magentometer! Well what has happened in the last few months was they amended the threshold required for an alert to be issued. Now it is far better as an alert system compared to 6 months ago and I have proof to show of this.
Here's a snapshot of the aurorawatch magnetometer that I saved soon after a geomagnetic storm on the 4th of February 2011, The planetery kp of this disturbance was KP6 but you can see those green bars at the bottom of the graph never turned yellow which is the indicator for minor storming and a yellow alert. No alert was given on this night despite the fact that the aurora would have been clearly visible in the night sky as far south as Yorkshire.
Look now to the exact same magnetometer graph from the same night that I pulled off the aurorawatch website just yesterday, the only slight difference with this graph is it's a 24hr period from 12am and the other one was a grab from the rolling graph, the actual data is the exact same. What's not the same though is those green bars are now yellow and even red! So aurorawatch changed the thresholds on all the old graphs within their archive as well.
Today's sunspot number is a low one at just 31 and has been below 80 since 02/02/12. Solar flux at 8pm was 103 and has persisted at around this level for two weeks.
Large sunspot 1422 continues to decay slowly as does 1420. Old sunspot 1410 has re-emerged over the eastern limb and is labelled 'New1'
Two cme's have occurred during the last 24 hours, neither are earth directed.
Today's sun
Hi, I was wondering if someone could confirm to me that the northern lights could be seen as far south as the isle of wight last night, Facebook was mad last with people talking about it. I could see a green glow out to my north..
Normally when auroral activity manages to get south enough for sightings in Wales and the midlands, the Germans will see a display too due to their geomagnetic latitude. There is a forum all about aurora and propagation (german based) but it's all quiet there with no reports from last night. Geomagnetic activity was very quiet last night and aurora may have been visible from the arctic regions but not much further south.
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Cheers for sharing Jethro, still making their minds up I see! You would expect them to come up with a pretty close prediction now we're four years into the cycle.
They are saying it will be the quietest cycle in 100 years but not the shortest. Solar cycle 14 (1902-1913) is the closest model to what the expected outcome of SC24 will be, the smoothed sunspot number for SC14 was 64 and the new predicted smoothed sn for SC24 is 63.
If SC24 does turn out like SC14 then what should we expect for the next solar cycle? SC14 was quieter than 13, but preceded a cycle that was more active than both 13 and 14, the same could happen for SC25. Some are saying SC25 will match the Dalton minimum (SC5) with a smoothed sn of just 49, some say a smoothed sn of 30 is possible for SC25. Whatever way it goes it will be interesting times for modern science.
Little solar update...
Growth from rapidly developing sunspot group 1422 has stalled in the last 24 hours. The trailing spot has decayed slightly and the region appears more compact. Despite it's size this region has only been capable of C class flaring, all other active regions on the earth side of the sun are quiet, most have decayed to a spotless plage.
Ace detected a cme arrival at approximately 2am this morning and is likely to be related to the C1 flare from 1422 on 19/02. As expected, earth effects were minimal and geomagnetic storming hasn't occurred since arriving.
A coronal hole stretching out from the southern hemisphere is at an earth directed position today (pic below). A high speed wind stream from this CH is likely to arrive on the 24th or 25th and cause unsettled or possibly active conditions during it's influence. I don't expect any auroral activity over the UK from this event.
Coronal hole
Today's sun
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Sunspot 1422 is really putting on some beef with significant polarity mixing. The region is currently positioned quite well for earth directed activity and there is potential for M-class flares from 1422 during the next 24 hour period.
Here's a .gif movie showing the pace of growth over the last 48 hours (up to 5pm).
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I despair! New street lights have been installed and the light polution is so bad I can barely see the brightest stars even if we have a clear night. To catch any chance of an aurora I now have a min 20 mile round trip. I'm surprised a Kp5 produced such a good display. but delighted that some had a chance to view it.
It's the same here though I can hike 15 minutes uphill and get a decent horizon view but the LP from Glasgow sometimes gets in the way especially during early evening aurora, not such a problem post midnight as the action is to the north west where there it's LP free.
Otherwise I'll drive to a spot around 20 miles to the south where there's no LP.
I noticed this on spaceweather.com today, it's quite funny but has a serious part to it as well, I captured screenshots to show what I'm on about and relates to forecasting the coronal hole wind influence that provided us with pretty good aurora last night.
Yesterday (18/02)
Today
(as you can see I added my own little bit of art!)
Today's spaceweather.com goes on to say that the wind stream that caused last night's aurora was 'expected' in their main headline. Not by them it wasn't.
And not to blow my own trumpet but no other solar forecaster out there mentioned any potential for geomagnetic storming from this CH but I did mention it was possible a few days ago right here!
The coronal hole influence continues but is now showing signs of waning. The Bz has been predominantly northwards or neutral for 12 hours so I'm inclined to believe that this will continue and as a result, geomagnetic storming (and aurora) at UK latitudes is unlikely this evening.
Solar activity remains low, but a new region is rapidly forming close to centre disk (labelled New1). This region was responsible for the first C class flare in days (C1 at 9am) and along with it appears a slow and faint cme that will probably hit us but on it's own is unlikely to cause much effect to our magnetic field.
Today's sun
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Very bright aurora visible from here in Ayrshire tonight with green arc around 20deg above the horizon and a clearly visible red band stretching above 30deg. Hopefully someone got a few pics as it was brighter than I was expecting it to be (need to get myself a fancy dslr camera one of these days!).
Some pics from last nights display.
Jon Cooper from Shap, Cumbria.
more here - http://spaceweather....29630558_fl.jpg
Austin Taylor, Shetland Islands
more pics here - http://spaceweather....29610383_fl.jpg
Did anyone in Scotland or Ireland hazard a look last night? The aurora was visible low on the horizon at around11pm, it wasn't immensely bright but there was a clearly defined arc from NW to NE.
While it'sconvenient I'll add a few pic's captured during the 15/02 geomagnetic storm.
Lesley Jennings, Aberdeenshire
more here - http://spaceweather....29346016_fl.jpg
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Ive always used Stellarium (on Windows PC) and can't rate it highly enough, I dont have an Iphone but my younger brother has recently got the one thats just came out and has Stellarium running on it (had a shot and its just as good as the Windows version), I think it's a free app you get on the Stellarium website and to my knowledge my bro's phone has the original firmware running on it.
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Very bright aurora visible from here in Ayrshire tonight with green arc around 20deg above the horizon and a clearly visible red band stretching above 30deg. Hopefully someone got a few pics as it was brighter than I was expecting it to be (need to get myself a fancy dslr camera one of these days!).
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A high speed wind stream from the earth facing coronal hole (16/02) has now arrived. Based on current data minor storm periods will be likely tonight and the influence duration may exceed 24 hours.
There's a high chance of auroral activity north of 57N and possible as far south as 54N during the coming hours.
A weakening magnetic field is the best indicator when it comes to locating the current location of aurora.
http://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/
-20nT = visible aurora at 57N
-50nT = visible aurora at 54N
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Well today was the day that I was expecting flux to hit 160, and that was based on the rapid growth of 1416 soon after it emerged plus the imminent return of 1402 and finally the re-emergence of 1408. What has happened is 1416 stalled then decayed without any cme activity, 1402 (now 1419) appeared half the size it once was before decaying itself and losing nearly all it's magnetic structure and new sunspot 1420, the largest spot on the earth side of the sun is a boring single polarity region not capable of much activity.
The latest solar flux measurement is 103 and sunspot number of 41, this could be a win for the coldies!!!
There's no doubt that the monthly's will take a hit. I'd say between April and December 2011 we were trending slightly above the cycle prediction which (i think) was for smoothed sfi of 140 and sunspot number of 85, so a bit of quiet doesn't instantly mean it's maunder time, but it does mean that those who re-amended their predictions based on the rapidly rising activity during 2011 might be considering a re-reamend?
'Once hopeful' 1416 is due to disappear over the limb today and 1418 is not far behind, flux will take a hit possibly sub 100. Old sunspot 1408 is re-emerging today on the eastern limb and labelled 'New1' on today's sun.
A reasonably sized, middle latitude coronal hole was earth facing yesterday (pic below). The high speed wind stream emitted will pass us on 19th and 20th February influencing our geomagnetic field with potential for minor storm periods. Aurora likely north of 57N and possible north of 54N should minor storming occur.
Coronal hole (16/02).
Today's sun.
Daily sunspot, SFI and AP.
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Did anyone in Scotland or Ireland hazard a look last night? The aurora was visible low on the horizon at around 11pm, it wasn't immensely bright but there was a clearly defined arc from NW to NE.
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Our geomagnetic field remains unsettled-active due to persisting negative Bz. Periods of minor storm activity possible during the next 2 to 3 hours bringing visible auroral activity to regions north of 55N.
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Early yesterday morning around 4am, Nasa's Soho satellite recorded a rapidly increasing wind density, peaking at 30 p/cm at 6am, this is likely to be related to the 09/02 cme. The very low wind speed and magnetic field strength associated with the cme meant that geomagnetic storming only occurred at high latitudes.
This morning at 7am, Soho shows what could be the arrival of the cme that left the sun on 10/02. Wind speeds had risen sharply to 400km/s and a proton density of just 17 p/cm3. Through the course of the cme passage the magnetic orientation of the solar wind has been predominately southwards making the geomagnetic field unsettled and providing conditions favourable for aurora. Despite this, and taking all current measurements into account, aurora is likely to be visible at latitudes above 57N, possibly 56N as we go towards midnight.
Solar activity has most definitely gone quiet during the last 48 hours, the background x-ray flux has been at a stable B2 level for most of today (pic below). Regions 1416 and 1418 have shown a reduction in activity, 1419 and 1420 have been quiet. Solar flux at 8pm was down slightly to 107 and sunspot number at 59.
Today's sun
All quiet
Thanks for all the updates WX.
Is the solar maximum still expected next year, or have we been there already?
Nah I don't think we're there yet. It could be the case that solar max happens around mid 2013 according to the most popular predictions. It is known that the quieter cycles are typically longer in duration compared to active cycles. For that reason I wouldn't be surprised if solar max happens during 2014 or even 2015.
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Solar and Aurora Activity Chat
in Space, Science & nature
Posted · Edited by GeorgeWX
Today's sunspot number is 70 and solar flux at 8pm was up to 132.
'Hyper' active region 1429 has continued to flare aggresively since the X1 event this morning with 12 seperate flares in 12 hours, 2 of which managed to reach M-class territory. You would think that this AR would gradually decay as a result of repetitive flaring, but nope 1429 is now looking large and very dangerous. By that I mean that severe flaring (X5+) is a real possibility during the next 24 hours as this region has incredible potential due to it's strong and compact magnetic structure. By far the angriest looking sunspot so far this cycle!
Further M class flares are likely from 1429 during the next 24 hours.
Movie of 1429 development. (3Mb)
Now in are the Lasco c3 images showing the cme relating to this morning's X1 flare speeding away from the sun. There is clear confirmation that earth is well within the trajectory of this cloud but the bright core of the cme will miss. Spaceweather.com reports that Nasa's GSWC has predicted a miss which in my opinion is either poor judgement or communication.
Lasco c3 movie of X1 flare cme (3Mb)
At the moment we have favourable conditions for aurora to be visible as far south as 57N, maybe down to 55N in the coming hour due to a strong southward Bz. Nice clear skies out there so maybe worth a look. Tomorrow night should hopefully bring aurora viewing opportunities to 54N provided the cme relating to the M2 flare arrives in time, otherwise it will be Wednesday night where aurora viewing opportunities may present themselves across a good chunk of the UK.
If you aren't going to get the chance to take a look then don't despair as there is a good chance of more cme activity from 1429 that could bring aurora to the UK this weekend.
Today's sun