MAGNIFICENT FLARE: On June 7th at 0641 UT, magnetic fields above sunspot complex 1226-1227 became unstable and erupted. The resulting blast produced an M2-class solar flare, an S1-class radiation storm, and an unbelievable movie.
"It looks like someone kicked a clod of dirt in the air," says solar physicist C. Alex Young of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in a Youtube video. "I've never seen material released in this way before--an amazing, amazing event."
Much of the plasma thrown up by the blast simply fell back to the sun--indeed, that's what makes the footage so dramatic. In the movies you can see blobs of hot gas as large as Earth making bright splashes where they hit the stellar surface. Some plasma, however, reached escape velocity and left the sun in the form of a coronal mass ejection: movie. Traveling faster than 1100 km/s, the CME should deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field on June 9th. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras when the CME arrives.
PICTURES
VIDEO
NASA films incredible solar flare: Video of unique sun explosion
NEWS
New York Times
- Jun 09, 2011
- 1 hour ago
By PETER BEHR of ClimateWire A massive burst of solar wind that erupted from the sun Tuesday is expected to deliver only a "glancing blow" to the Earth's vulnerable magnetic field, NASA officials said yesterday. But it will preview what some experts ...
Seattle Post Intelligencer (blog)
- Jun 09, 2011
- 15 hours ago
That's what the University of Alaska's Geophysical Institute is predicting, saying the giant eruption — technically not a solar flare, despite Internet buzz — will mean a larger-than- usual viewing range for the northern lights Wednesday night. ...
INFO
A solar flare is a sudden brightening observed over the Sun surface or the solar limb, which is interpreted as a large energy release of up to 6 × 1025 ...
A flare is defined as a sudden, rapid, and intense variation in brightness. A solar flare occurs when magnetic energy that has built up in the solar ...
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Jun 21, 2008 ... Share We could be in for a huge firework display in 2012. The Sun will be approaching the peak of its 11-year cycle, called “solar maximum”, ...
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