Bim, bam, smash! The Sun hurled two clouds of particles in our general direction, putting space weather watchers on alert. There’s now a high chance of auroras on Sept. 12 (Friday), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with more activity possible during the weekend.
The coronal mass ejections erupted Sept. 9 and Sept. 10 from sunspot AR2158. The Sept. 10 flare packed the strongest class punch the sun has, an X-flare, which briefly caused HF radio blackouts on Earth. We have some amateur shots of the sunspot and Sun below.
“Radio emissions from shock waves at the leading edge of the CME suggest that the cloud tore through the sun’s atmosphere at speeds as high as 3,750 km/s [2,330 miles per second],” wrote SpaceWeather.com. “That would make this a very fast moving storm, and likely to reach Earth before the weekend. Auroras are definitely in the offing.”
Photographer John Chumack captured the Sun and AR2158 in these pictures from Monday (Sept. 8). If you’ve got some great Sun shots to share, be sure to put it on our Universe Today Flickr group!
Astronomers have only been aware of fast radio bursts for about two decades. These are…
How do you weigh one of the largest objects in the entire universe? Very carefully,…
Exploring the Moon poses significant risks, with its extreme environment and hazardous terrain presenting numerous…
Volcanoes are not restricted to the land, there are many undersea versions. One such undersea…
Some binary stars are unusual. They contain a main sequence star like our Sun, while…
11 million years ago, Mars was a frigid, dry, dead world, just like it is…