Solar Blast this morning - stay tuned
May 3, 2005 20: 06 EST
"SOLAR BLAST: This morning, just on the other side of the sun's eastern limb, something exploded. The blast hurled a bright coronal mass ejection (CME) into space, but probably not toward Earth. Stay tuned for details."
That was the brief message on Spaceweather's website when we logged in to check on the condition of the M-class solar flare, threatening to wipe out expedition satellite phones in the Arctic May 1-2.
Forecasting weather is a b.
No more info on what's going on, but then again - forecasting weather is a tricky task (we should know doing it for mountaineers) - and forecasting space weather is even worse.
"In terms of space weather forecasting, we're where weather forecasters were in the 1950s. They didn't see hurricanes until the rain clouds were right above them; in our case, we can see storms leaving the Sun but we have to make guesses and use models to figure out if and when it will impact Earth," said Dr. Michael Kaiser, Project Scientist for STEREO at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
3D much better
So NASA has a plan. The new Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) mission will help provide the big picture by using two nearly identical spacecraft to image the Sun and track its activity in high definition 3-D.
At present, a fleet of satellites takes pictures of the sun every 10-15 minutes. Scientist's can see a solar outburst, but can't tell which way the flare is traveling - towards earth, or not. That's where 3D will be useful.
Cross-eyed weather men
"Knowing where it is in space is crucial. At this point we don't quite know where it is, how fast it's traveling, or how one structure interacts with another," says the scientists, "basically we're looking at the Sun with one eye. With STEREO, we're finally going to have the ability to gain this extra dimension, or this depth perception we didn't have before."
More than four years after solar maximum, there's one big sun spot transiting the solar disk now, alerts SpaceWeather.com. Since it appeared on April 25th, sunspot 756 has tripled in size. It's now about five times wider than Earth and very dynamic.
Sky watchers in Alaska and Canada should be alert for auroras around May 1st and 2nd. That's when Earth is expected to run into a solar wind stream flowing from a coronal hole on the sun. The flare is M-class (medium-sized) and can cause brief radio blackouts that affect Earth's polar regions.
On November 4, 2003 expeditions’ communications started going haywire – from Everest to the Atlantic. That flare "was more than twice as big as the previous record flare," according to the scientists. So big that sensors on satellites were getting over-loaded, like if you were to weigh an elephant on a bathroom scale.
For expeditions, this huge blast along with the others at the time broke down their communication capability. Data transfer through the sat phones didn't work at all and calls would be inaudible or cut off.
Scientists classify solar flares according to their x-ray brightness in the wavelength range 1 to 8 Angstroms. There are 3 categories: X-class flares are big; they are major events that can trigger planet-wide radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms.
M-class flares are medium-sized; they generally cause brief radio blackouts that affect Earth's polar regions. Minor radiation storms sometimes follow an M-class flare. Compared to X- and M-class events, C-class flares are small with few noticeable consequences here on Earth.
Image of a solar flare hitting Earth and showcasting an Aurora, courtesy of NASA.
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