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DOUBLE ERUPTION (UPDATED):
Sunspot AR1667 erupted this morning
(Feb. 6th @ 00:21 UT), producing a double-peaked
C9-class
solar flare that lasted more than ten hours from
beginning to end. The slowly-unfolding explosion
also hurled two CMEs into space. The clouds are
not heading directly for Earth, but they could deliver
glancing blows to our planet's magnetic field on
Feb. 9-10. High-latitude sky watchers should be
alert for auroras this weekend. Solar
flare alerts: text,
voice.
Click to view a full-disk movie of
the eruption recorded by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory:
A close-up
of the blast site shows an inky-dark plume of
plasma spiralling away from the explosion. The darkness
of the material is a sign that it was extra-dense
and cool relative to the surrounding atmosphere
of the sun.
Realtime
Space Weather Photo Gallery
LOUD SOLAR RADIO
BURST: Last Saturday, Feb. 2nd,
the solar activity forecast called for "quiet."
In fact, says amateur radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft,
"it was really loud. There were several strong
solar radio emissions including one super-strong
Type
III burst at 1954 UT. I captured it at 28 MHz
and 21.1 MHz as it totally drowned out a shortwave
voice transmission." Click to listen:
Dynamic spectrum credit: Dick Flagg,
Windward Community College Radio Observatory, Oahu,
Hawaii
The source of the burst was sunspot
AR1667, which unleashed a C2.9-class solar flare
just before the roar emerged from the loudspeaker
of Ashcraft's radio telescope. Type III solar radio
bursts are produced by electrons accelerated to
high energies (1 to 100 keV) by solar flares. As
the electrons stream outward from the sun, they
excite plasma oscillations and radio waves in the
sun's atmosphere. When these radio waves head in
the direction of Earth, they make themselves heard
in the loudspeakers of shortwave radios around the
dayside of the planet.
Realtime
Space Weather Photo Gallery
COMET LEMMON UPDATE:
Glowing much brighter than expected,
Comet Lemmon (C/2012 F6) is gliding through the
skies of the southern hemisphere about 92 million
miles (0.99 AU) from Earth. Amateur astronomer Rolf
Wahl Olsen sends this picture from his backyard
in Auckland, New Zealand:
"I took this image of Comet Lemmon
on the 28th of January," says Olsen. "It
has become quite bright now and has also grown a
beautiful tail."
Discovered on March 23rd 2012 by the
Mount Lemmon survey in Arizona, Comet Lemmon is
on an
elliptical orbit with a period of approximately
11,000 years. This is its first visit to the inner
solar system in a very long time. The comet is brightening
as it approaches the sun; light
curves suggest that it will reach 2nd or 3rd
magnitude, similar to the stars in the Big Dipper,
in late March when it approaches the sun at about
the same distance as Venus (0.7 AU).
At the moment, the comet is glowing
like a 7th magnitude star, just below the limit
of naked-eye visibility. To capture the faint details
of the comet's filamentary tail, Olsen used a 10-inch
telescope, a sensitive CCD camera, and an exposure
time of 1 hour 17 minutes. Complete photo details
are given here.
Lemmon's green color comes from the
gases that make up its coma. Jets spewing from the
comet's nucleus contain cyanogen (CN: a poisonous
gas found in many comets) and diatomic carbon (C2).
Both substances glow green when illuminated by sunlight
in the near-vacuum of space.
Northern hemisphere observers will
get their first good look at the comet in early
April; until then it is a target exclusively for
astronomers in the southern hemisphere.
Realtime
Comet Photo Gallery
Realtime
Aurora Photo Gallery
Realtime
Space Weather Photo Gallery
Realtime
Noctilucent Cloud Photo Gallery
[previous years: 2003,
2004,
2005,
2006,
2007,
2008,
2009,
2011]
