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Post by af4ex on Mar 21, 2011 16:55:44 GMT
Big sunspot (old 1165) rotating into view! ;D Does look Huge, Back ground noise has risen to C level. Could be a fun one to watch. Absolutely! It's a powerhouse. It was the source of the C-flare at 0959Z [where the flare touches the bottom of the screen]. (My 1175 guess was wrong, but I hadn't seen this one at the time).  |
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Post by sunspotboy on Mar 21, 2011 18:10:16 GMT
Nasa said 2 years ago that if a CME with Northern polarity is followed with one with Southern polarity, the magnetic field protection from the Southern field falls away….
Anybody any idea if this was the case with the CME’s from March 10-11 ??
A Giant Breach in Earth’s Magnetic Field
Nasa 12.16.2008
Dec. 16, 2008: NASA’s five THEMIS spacecraft have discovered a breach in Earth’s magnetic field ten times larger than anything previously thought to exist. Solar wind can flow in through the opening to “load up” the magnetosphere for powerful geomagnetic storms. But the breach itself is not the biggest surprise. Researchers are even more amazed at the strange and unexpected way it forms, overturning long-held ideas of space physics.
“At first I didn’t believe it,” says THEMIS project scientist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center. “This finding fundamentally alters our understanding of the solar wind-magnetosphere interaction.”
“The opening was huge—four times wider than Earth itself,” says Wenhui Li, a space physicist at the University of New Hampshire who has been analyzing the data. Li’s colleague Jimmy Raeder, also of New Hampshire, says “1027 particles per second were flowing into the magnetosphere—that’s a 1 followed by 27 zeros. This kind of influx is an order of magnitude greater than what we thought was possible.”
The event began with little warning when a gentle gust of solar wind delivered a bundle of magnetic fields from the Sun to Earth. Like an octopus wrapping its tentacles around a big clam, solar magnetic fields draped themselves around the magnetosphere and cracked it open. The cracking was accomplished by means of a process called “magnetic reconnection.” High above Earth’s poles, solar and terrestrial magnetic fields linked up (reconnected) to form conduits for solar wind. Conduits over the Arctic and Antarctic quickly expanded; within minutes they overlapped over Earth’s equator to create the biggest magnetic breach ever recorded by Earth-orbiting spacecraft.
The size of the breach took researchers by surprise. “We’ve seen things like this before,” says Raeder, “but never on such a large scale. The entire day-side of the magnetosphere was open to the solar wind.”
The circumstances were even more surprising. Space physicists have long believed that holes in Earth’s magnetosphere open only in response to solar magnetic fields that point south. The great breach of June 2007, however, opened in response to a solar magnetic field that pointed north.
“To the lay person, this may sound like a quibble, but to a space physicist, it is almost seismic,” says Sibeck. “When I tell my colleagues, most react with skepticism, as if I’m trying to convince them that the sun rises in the west.”
Here is why they can’t believe their ears: The solar wind presses against Earth’s magnetosphere almost directly above the equator where our planet’s magnetic field points north. Suppose a bundle of solar magnetism comes along, and it points north, too. The two fields should reinforce one another, strengthening Earth’s magnetic defenses and slamming the door shut on the solar wind. In the language of space physics, a north-pointing solar magnetic field is called a “northern IMF” and it is synonymous with shields up!
“So, you can imagine our surprise when a northern IMF came along and shields went down instead,” says Sibeck. “This completely overturns our understanding of things.”
Northern IMF events don’t actually trigger geomagnetic storms, notes Raeder, but they do set the stage for storms by loading the magnetosphere with plasma. A loaded magnetosphere is primed for auroras, power outages, and other disturbances that can result when, say, a CME (coronal mass ejection) hits.
The years ahead could be especially lively. Raeder explains: “We’re entering Solar Cycle 24. For reasons not fully understood, CMEs in even-numbered solar cycles (like 24) tend to hit Earth with a leading edge that is magnetized north. Such a CME should open a breach and load the magnetosphere with plasma just before the storm gets underway. It’s the perfect sequence for a really big event.”
Sibeck agrees. “This could result in stronger geomagnetic storms than we have seen in many years.”
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Post by lsvalgaard on Mar 21, 2011 18:11:44 GMT
Big sunspot (old 1165) rotating into view! ;D Does look Huge, Back ground noise has risen to C level. Could be a fun one to watch. another one of those slow 'flares'. |
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Post by af4ex on Mar 21, 2011 19:02:16 GMT
sunspotboy> The great breach of June 2007, however, opened in response to > a solar magnetic field that pointed north. Interesting. I've heard of this event, but don't know much about it. FYI, you can actually "dial up" this time period (or any other time) using the NICT solar summary tool: hirweb.nict.go.jp/sedoss/solact3/do?d=2007%2C6%2C30I don't see anything remarkable here in June 2007 that would suggest a 'giant breach'. Maybe the wrong date. (Public media are notorious for twisting the facts of a story). Perhaps Dr. S. can enlighten us further on this breach. :-|
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Post by lsvalgaard on Mar 21, 2011 19:47:34 GMT
sunspotboy> The great breach of June 2007, however, opened in response to > a solar magnetic field that pointed north. Interesting. I've heard of this event, but don't know much about it. FYI, you can actually "dial up" this time period (or any other time) using the NICT solar summary tool: hirweb.nict.go.jp/sedoss/solact3/do?d=2007%2C6%2C30I don't see anything remarkable here in June 2007 that would suggest a 'giant breach'. Maybe the wrong date. (Public media are notorious for twisting the facts of a story). Perhaps Dr. S. can enlighten us further on this breach. :-| This is just the usual hype. Nothing special. The notion of a 'breach' is completely wrong to begin with. What happens is that magnetic fields connect with the Earth's field [at all angles, but most efficiently for southwards fields] and sweeps them into the tail. The tail is inherently unstable and reconnection in the tail releases the pent up magnetic energy. |
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Post by af4ex on Mar 21, 2011 23:08:28 GMT
@leif > another one of those slow 'flares'. Yes, very similar to the last one: 1) fiery coronal loops in 304A and 2) rising, anvil-shaped blast cloud on the polar side of the loops in 094A light ;D   |
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Post by af4ex on Mar 21, 2011 23:37:32 GMT
Old 1165 [now AR11176] has a second big spot, which appears to be connected to even more stuff still on the far side. ;D ;D Attachments:
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Post by heather on Mar 22, 2011 0:17:39 GMT
hi all! may i kindly ask what a 'B-ray' is? Are the B classifications less powerful than an M or C? I am a little confused where the B would be.
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Post by af4ex on Mar 22, 2011 1:39:52 GMT
heather> What is a B-ray? I assume you're referring to the X-Ray classifications: A,B,C,M,X These are all x-rays, with the same wavelengths, 1 to 8 angstroms. The only difference between the classes is the energy levels, which are measured in watts per square meter (W/m 2), at the receiver on the GOES 15 satellite. For Class B x-ray flares it ranges from 0.1 to 1.0 microwatt per square meter. The classes are ordered by powers of 10, so Class B events are ten times more powerful than Class A etc. Class X is unbounded, starting at 0.1 milliwatts per m 2 and going up. Note that these levels are actually very small compared to the total solar irradiance (mostly visible light and IR) power, which is huge in comparison to the X-Ray: 1366 watts per square meter (at the top of the Earth's atmosphere)! More info here: www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/indices/events/README(here's the power table from the README)
XRA: X-ray Class
Class x = peak flux in the 0.1 to 0.8 nm range
In mks system
Wm-2
A x < 10-7
B 10-7 <= x < 10-6
C 10-6 <= x < 10-5
M 10-5 <= x < 10-4
X 10-4 <= x
Hope that helps.
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Post by heather on Mar 22, 2011 4:11:44 GMT
@ af4ex Thank you very much! You just made my missing pieces fit. I honestly thought B x-ray was the wrong way to 'say' this.  If there are any teachers...NASA is accepting questions during their solar week. I have a direct link in my post solarflareeffects.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/solar-week/ |
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Post by af4ex on Mar 22, 2011 13:23:57 GMT
@ af4ex Thank you very much! You just made my missing pieces fit. I honestly thought B x-ray was the wrong way to 'say' this. If there are any teachers...NASA is accepting questions during their solar week. I have a direct link in my post solarflareeffects.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/solar-week/Glad to be of assistance. Let me clarify these x-ray flare classes a bit further for you, because I think your understanding may still be a tad off. It's not really correct to say "B x-ray", as if that was some kind of entity on its own. "B" is a rather narrowly defined attribute of an event. So you should say "B-class solar x-ray flare" etc. (It's "narrowly defined" because it only applies to solar flare events in the 1-8 angstrom range, detected by a GOES satellite) For example, if you asked your doctor or dentist if they were using "B x-rays", they wouldn't know what you were talking about. These classes only apply to flare events on the sun. [Medically, x-rays are rated by their ionizing effect in a total absorbed dose] Also remember that these so-called "x-ray" flares are actually huge explosions that emit huge amounts of energy all over the electromagnetic spectrum, x-rays being a miniscule output of those explosions, (but very useful, because they reveal a lot about solar activity in general). :-| |
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Post by af4ex on Mar 22, 2011 17:14:47 GMT
New region on northeast limb (Solen S914) was observed at Nobeyama to flare in microwaves early this morning. AR11176 also was flaring, with promise of more fireworks to follow. We are thankful that the Nobeyama crew, and equipment, apparently escaped harm from the recent events in Japan. Attachments:
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Post by THEO BAKALEXIS on Mar 22, 2011 21:32:36 GMT
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Post by af4ex on Mar 23, 2011 2:12:43 GMT
Gosh, look at the size of 1176's magnetic domain. Do they keep track of the area sizes on these magnetograms? Looks like this would set a record for SC24. Attachments:
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Post by heather on Mar 23, 2011 3:10:19 GMT
af4ex Thank you for clarifying. I was seeing both terms fly around on other blogs and was not sure which was correct.  May I ask to you and any one else, when you are monitoring the sunspots, what are you looking at? I am not sure what you all are seeing as impressive or what/why it's interesting. Don't get me wrong this is very interesting, with not having studied in the science field I am still reading on the subjects and I just feel a little lost in the sauce. I hope I'm not a pester 
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