IMPACT
Thursday, November 6, 2003
By Dr. Tony Phillips
SpaceWeather.com
AURORAS: Last week, a series of eruptions from sunspot 486 sparked intense magnetic storms on Earth. Auroras appeared in places they are seldom seen -- like Florida. On October 29th Paul Gardner photographed auroras over Orlando. "We're at 28.3 degrees latitude," notes Gardner, the president of the University of Central Florida Astronomical Society. "These are the first auroras I have ever seen, or photographed."
Steve Rismiller of Milford, Ohio, captured this image of the flare in progress at 20:40 UT on Nov. 4th. It is the brighter of the two plumes rising above the sun's limb.
IMPACT: A coronal mass ejection hurled into space by the superflare described below has just swept past Earth (at 1924 UT on Nov. 6th). Moderate geomagnetic storms and high-latitude auroras are possible during the hours ahead.
SUPERFLARE: Astronomers won't soon forget Nov. 4th, 2003--the day of the biggest explosion ever recorded in our solar system. The blast originated from giant sunspot 486, and on the Richter scale of solar flares, it measured X28. Smaller flares in the past have caused power outages and widespread auroras. The Nov. 4th explosion was not directed squarely toward Earth, and its effects so far have been relatively minimal. Even so, it was a flare to remember.
(More: http://spaceweather.com/)
2003 © Dr. Tony Phillips.
Dan
IMPACT . . .