NASA VIDEO: Sun Unleashes 'Monster Eruption'
Intense.
The sun unleashed a monster eruption of super-hot plasma Friday (Nov. 16) in back-to-back solar storms captured on camera by a NASA spacecraft.
The giant sun eruption, called a solar prominence, occurred at 1 a.m. EST (0600 GMT), with another event flaring up four hours later. The prominences was so large, it expanded beyond the camera view of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which captured high-definition video of the solar eruption.
"The red-glowing looped material is plasma, a hot gas made of electrically charged hydrogen and helium," officials with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, which oversees the SDO mission, explained in a description. "The prominence plasma flows along a tangled and twisted structure of magnetic fields generated by the sun’s internal dynamo. An erupting prominence occurs when such a structure becomes unstable and bursts outward, releasing the plasma."
Nov 19, 2012 at 11:57 AM
Reader Comments (33)
http://www.space.com/18533-giant-sun-eruption-nasa-video.html
It was impressive and glad they gave me the tour.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/06may_carringtonflare/
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/22mar_saber/
http://digitaljournal.com/article/315710
And then rub their nose in it....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEJNJ0rFSe8
http://www.spaceweather.com
Currently sunspot activity:
ANOTHER FAST-GROWING SUNSPOT: The sunspot number is increasing again. During the past 36 hours, active region AR1618 has more than quadrupled in size. It now has more than a dozen dark cores scattered across an expanse of stellar surface more than 10 times wider than Earth...
...The sunspot has also developed a 'beta-gamma' magnetic field that harbors energy for strong solar flares. NOAA forecasters estimate a 30% chance of M-class flares and a 5% chance of X-flares during the next 24 hours. Because of the sunspot's nearly central location on the solar disk, any eruptions will likely be Earth-directed.
http://vimeo.com/40555466
The gentleman who produced this has another one from a year ago and is currently working on a new one.
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/11/21/turkey-complaints-on-the-rise-in-brookline/
If that was my neighborhood the attacks would be very short lived and the freezers would be full. You got to love the new society, sissies everywhere.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/13/ipcc-ar5-draft-leaked-contains-game-changing-admission-of-enhanced-solar-forcing/
Draft IPCC report leaked (the evidence is so overwhelming it has to be kept secret!)
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/12/draft-ipcc-report-leaked-the-evidence-is-so-overwhelming-it-has-to-be-kept-secret/
Serial Number: 819
Issue Time: 2013 Jan 17 1530 UTC
WARNING: Geomagnetic K-index of 5 expected
Valid From: 2013 Jan 17 1545 UTC
Valid To: 2013 Jan 17 2100 UTC
Warning Condition: Onset
NOAA Scale: G1 - Minor
NOAA Space Weather Scale descriptions can be found at
www.swpc.noaa.gov/NOAAscales
Potential Impacts: Area of impact primarily poleward of 60 degrees Geomagnetic Latitude.
Induced Currents - Weak power grid fluctuations can occur.
Spacecraft - Minor impact on satellite operations possible.
Aurora - Aurora may be visible at high latitudes, i.e., northern tier of the U.S. such as northern Michigan and Maine.
http://spaceweather.com
COMET ISON SPROUTS A TAIL: Comet ISON, which is plunging toward the sun for a bright and fiery encounter in late 2013, has just sprouted a tail. It's not much--yet--but that is because the comet is still in deep space near the orbit of Jupiter. On. Feb. 3rd, amateur astronomer Rolando Ligustri photographed the development using a robotic telescope in New Mexico:
Comet ISON doesn't look very impressive now as it glides through the cold vacuum more than 600,000 km from Earth, but its appearance will improve later this year. On Nov. 28th, ISON is going to glide through the sun's atmosphere only 1.1 million km above the stellar surface. It could emerge from the encounter glowing as brightly as the full Moon, visible in broad daylight near the sun. If so, today's budding tail would likely grow into a garish appendage that wows observers in both hemispheres--no telescope required. Stay tuned for updates.
Update: NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft has also observed Comet ISON's sprouting tail. Click here for a video.
Comet ISON video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_1HdOCOJ_Q
This poses no hazard, but for those interested in science and what may be in the skies later this year...
Time Lapse Video: Comets Lemmon and PanSTARRS sweeping through the Southern Skies
http://vimeo.com/59571509
[snip]
Two comets - C/2012 F6 (Lemmon) and C/2011 L4 (PanSTARRS) can be seen moving through the Southern Sky in this short time lapse video. Hopefully comet PanSTARRS brightens up significantly before moving into the Northern Hemisphere sky.
Note: Be on the lookout for this third one in Oct-Jan.
http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_22286986/comet-2013-could-outshine-full-moon
http://vimeo.com/64122803
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/22/bigger-things-to-worry-about-than-global-warming-scientists-say-a-destructive-solar-blast-narrowly-missed-earth-in-2012/
Video follows of the July 23rd, 2012 Coronal Mass Ejection, said to be the fastest ever
From UC BERKELEY — Earth dodged a huge magnetic bullet from the sun on July 23, 2012.
According to University of California, Berkeley, and Chinese researchers, a rapid succession of coronal mass ejections — the most intense eruptions on the sun — sent a pulse of magnetized plasma barreling into space and through Earth’s orbit. Had the eruption come nine days earlier, when the ignition spot on the solar surface was aimed at Earth, it would have hit the planet, potentially wreaking havoc with the electrical grid, disabling satellites and GPS, and disrupting our increasingly electronic lives.
This movie shows a coronal mass ejection (CME) on the sun from July 22, 2012, at 10:00 p.m. EDT until 2 a.m. on July 23 as captured by NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory-Ahead (STEREO A). Because the CME headed in STEREO A’s direction, it appears like a giant halo around the sun. NOTE: This video loops 3 times.
The solar bursts would have enveloped Earth in magnetic fireworks matching the largest magnetic storm ever reported on Earth, the so-called Carrington event of 1859. The dominant mode of communication at that time, the telegraph system, was knocked out across the United States, literally shocking telegraph operators. Meanwhile, the Northern Lights lit up the night sky as far south as Hawaii….
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Here is a video of another solar storm a few years ago that caused widespread blackouts and transformer damage. I used to build, maintain and test components in substations some years ago and can say that this video is spot on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEqE-g128kk
SUPER SOLAR FILAMENT: It is, arguably, the second biggest thing in the solar system. A filament of magnetism almost 1,000,000 km long is stretching across the face of the sun. Only the sun itself is bigger. Yesterday in the Canary Islands, Frank A. Rodriguez used a Lunt Solar Telescope to photograph the super structure:
This is a solar filament, a tendril of plasma held suspended above the surface of the sun by magnetic forces. Filaments appear on the sun all the time, but this one is unusually large, 5 to 10 times longer than ordinary filaments. If it becomes unstable and erupts, it could hurl parts of itself into space. Pieces of the filament falling back to the solar surface would explode upon impact, sparking a Hyder flare.
Large solar filament erupts, produces partial halo CME
http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2015/02/22/large-solar-filament-erupts-produces-partial-halo-cme/
A large solar filament, which was stretching more than 857 780 km (533 000 miles) last week, finally erupted at approximately 09:25 UTC on February 21, 2015.
A partial halo CME (or sequence of CMEs) was later observed in SOHO LASCO coronagraph imagery emerging from the southwest. The filament erupted on the farside of the Sun, in the south central portion of the disk.
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We were god damn lucky this wasn't facing toward earth. This would have been another Carrington type event and most likely cause VERY SERIOUS electrical and other problems. Will post more info later.