Thursday, May 23, 2013
SUBSIDING RADIATION STORM: A solar radiation storm in progress around Earth is slowly subsiding. It currently ranks S2 (moderate) on NOAA storm scales, which means that satellites in Earth orbit could experience "single event upsets" in their electronic systems. The radiation storm is also a source of noise in spacecraft cameras, giving their images a snowy appearance (see below)
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M5-CLASS EXPLOSION: The ongoing radiation storm got started on May 22nd when the magnetic canopy of sunspot AR1745 exploded. The blast produced an M5-class solar flare and hurled a magnificent CME over the sun's western limb:
Credit: the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)
The movie of the CME is very "snowy." That is caused by high-energy solar protons striking the CCD camera in SOHO's coronagraph.
Each strike produces a brief snow-like speckle in the image. This
hailstorm of solar protons is what forecasters mean by "radiation
storm."
Although the explosion was not squarely Earth-directed, the CME will likely be geoeffective. The expanding cloud appears set to deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field on May 24th around 1200 UT. According to NOAA
forecast models, the impact will more than double the solar wind plasma
density around Earth and boost the solar wind speed to ~600 km/s.
High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.
