Solar Flares

Historic planetary instability and catastrophe. Evidence for electrical scarring on planets and moons. Electrical events in today's solar system. Electric Earth.

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seasmith
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Re: MEGA SOLAR FILAMENT; let's observe this one

Unread post by seasmith » Mon Dec 06, 2010 2:30 pm

Dec 06 update:

Image
A magnetic filament snaking around the sun's SE limb just keeps getting longer. The portion visible today stretches more than 700,000 km--a full solar radius. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory took this picture during the early hours of Dec. 6th:

http://spaceweather.com/

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GaryN
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Re: MEGA SOLAR FILAMENT; let's observe this one

Unread post by GaryN » Mon Dec 06, 2010 10:35 pm

Yup, she blowed up good, real good.
http://www.spaceweather.com/images2010/ ... g79bn2ck70
In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete. -Buckminster Fuller

Nitai
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Re: MEGA SOLAR FILAMENT; let's observe this one

Unread post by Nitai » Tue Dec 07, 2010 9:56 am

http://www2.nict.go.jp/y/y223/simulation/realtime/

Also showing some intense activity within the Magnetosphere in the last 20 minutes.
"If you take a highly intelligent person and give them the best possible, elite education, then you will most likely wind up with an academic who is completely impervious to reality.” - Halton Arp.

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solrey
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Re: MEGA SOLAR FILAMENT; let's observe this one

Unread post by solrey » Tue Dec 07, 2010 11:02 am

Wow, SDO is providing some incredibly detailed images. It looks like the filament shorted out against the top of the photosphere resulting in an exploding double layer perhaps? However, it seems to have merely produced a moderate CME for such a large filament. It wasn't directed towards Earth so we shouldn't expect any geomagnetic effects.
From SpaceWeather.com:
Earth was not in the line of fire; the cloud should sail wide of our planet. Earth-effects might be limited to pretty pictures.
Nitai, have you looked at any of the other data besides the real-time simulations? Geomagnetic activity has been very quiet the past couple of days. We didn't even get a boost in x-ray flux other than a weak B-class flare that may or may not be related. Everything else is pretty much flat-lined as well and that shouldn't change any time soon. Anyhoooo, just a friendly reminder to consider all of the relevant data. ;)

cheers
“Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality"
Nikola Tesla

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Brigit Bara
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Re: MEGA SOLAR FILAMENT; let's observe this one

Unread post by Brigit Bara » Tue Dec 07, 2010 11:10 am

I watched the STEREO-A video from spaceweather.com yesterday and there was a very large bright object in the final frame. Today however that bright object is gone from the video.

I wish I had clipped a picture from the video. Perhaps someone else saw it. It may have been just a flaw, but it is interesting that they went to the trouble to remove it.
“Oh for shame, how these mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, when it is they rather who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given…”
~Homer

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GaryN
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Re: MEGA SOLAR FILAMENT; let's observe this one

Unread post by GaryN » Tue Dec 07, 2010 1:14 pm

Image
The structure of a magnetic flux rope. In the interior the magnetic field is strong and axial. The magnetic pressure gradient force pushes outward, balanced by the curvature force of the twisted field around the axis. Currents flow to maintain the twist. If the current flows solely along the magnetic field, the structure is termed force-free (after Russell and Elphic, 1979).
Larger image:
http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/ ... 6/fig6.gif

I'm wondering if it was a filament/corona interaction that destabilised
the flux tube, or if it was a snapping of the central magnetic tension lines
leading to an unwinding of the outer layers, which is what I am tending to see
after watching the event a few times. Just speculating.

Magnetic Stress in Solar System Plasmas
http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/personnel/ ... apers/896/
In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete. -Buckminster Fuller

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solrey
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Re: MEGA SOLAR FILAMENT; let's observe this one

Unread post by solrey » Tue Dec 07, 2010 1:34 pm

BrigitBara, you mean the bright spots at the left of the image? They show up near the very end in one or two frames at the time of maximum brightness in the eruption. It took a few attempts to pause the vid at the right time but I did manage to get a screenshot.

Image

To me it looks like a "lens flare" in the camera optics.

Seems to have produced a bigger CME than I had thought initially, probably a little stronger than average rather than the "epic blast" announced in the headlines. :?


GaryN, thanks for that info.

cheers
“Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality"
Nikola Tesla

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MrAmsterdam
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Re: MEGA SOLAR FILAMENT; let's observe this one

Unread post by MrAmsterdam » Tue Dec 07, 2010 1:40 pm

It takes 3 to 6 days before a CME hits the earths ionosphere, if it is going to hit us at all.

Something completely different; this 'magnetic field line' snapping' produced a magnetic storm in the ionosphere, right? To say it otherwise, does any electric discharge produce a magnetic pulse? Or let me say even differently.

If I had a setup of a plasma antenna at one side and an electric discharge sparc plug at a 100 feet on the other side, could the magnetic pulse be measured within the plasma of the antenna? Does this experiment represent a plasma model of the ionosphere - sun interaction?
Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality. -Nikola Tesla -1934

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Brigit Bara
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Re: MEGA SOLAR FILAMENT; let's observe this one

Unread post by Brigit Bara » Tue Dec 07, 2010 8:36 pm

solrey: They show up near the very end in one or two frames at the time of maximum brightness in the eruption. It took a few attempts to pause the vid at the right time but I did manage to get a screenshot.
Very nice capture, thank you! It could be something grainy/imperfect in the imagery as you say. I do think it was more brilliant and lasting in the first video release, and appeared to be possibly a sungrazer.

A third explantion is that I have discovered yet another of my mental superpowers: to spot these practically subliminal frames in STEREO CMEs. That's good!
“Oh for shame, how these mortals put the blame upon us gods, for they say evils come from us, when it is they rather who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given…”
~Homer

seasmith
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Re: MEGA SOLAR FILAMENT; let's observe this one

Unread post by seasmith » Tue Dec 07, 2010 9:18 pm

If I had a setup of a plasma antenna at one side and an electric discharge sparc plug at a 100 feet on the other side, could the magnetic pulse be measured within the plasma of the antenna?
MrAmsterdam,

Not sure wether that is a merely rhetorical question you posed,
but anytime there is a arc-spark near an (unshielded) radio receiver, it will be heard, meaning an EM radiation was created; and of course the stronger the E, the more of the M.

Is it a "plasma model of the ionosphere - sun interaction?"
Good question.

s

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MrAmsterdam
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Re: MEGA SOLAR FILAMENT; let's observe this one

Unread post by MrAmsterdam » Sun Dec 12, 2010 12:47 pm

seasmith wrote:
If I had a setup of a plasma antenna at one side and an electric discharge sparc plug at a 100 feet on the other side, could the magnetic pulse be measured within the plasma of the antenna?
MrAmsterdam,

Not sure wether that is a merely rhetorical question you posed,
but anytime there is a arc-spark near an (unshielded) radio receiver, it will be heard, meaning an EM radiation was created; and of course the stronger the E, the more of the M.

Is it a "plasma model of the ionosphere - sun interaction?"
Good question.

s
No, not a rhetorical question - I was trying to come up with some kind of model you could test in the lab. You could compare the properties of the plasma lab model with those of the sun. The earth's capacitor property is missing in my plasma antenna model however.
Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality. -Nikola Tesla -1934

seasmith
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Re: MEGA SOLAR FILAMENT; let's observe this one

Unread post by seasmith » Mon Dec 13, 2010 1:36 pm

Global Eruption Rocks the Sun
Dec. 13, 2010: On August 1, 2010, an entire hemisphere of the sun erupted. Filaments of magnetism snapped and exploded, shock waves raced across the stellar surface, billion-ton clouds of hot gas billowed into space. Astronomers knew they had witnessed something big.
It was so big, it may have shattered old ideas about solar activity.
Image
Locations of key events are labeled in this extreme ultraviolet image of the sun, obtained by the Solar Dynamics Observatory during the Great Eruption of August 1st. White lines trace the sun's magnetic field. Credit: K Schrijver & A. Title. http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibr ... ations.jpg

Explosions on the sun are not localized or isolated events, they announced. Instead, solar activity is interconnected by magnetism over breathtaking distances. Solar flares, tsunamis, coronal mass ejections--they can go off all at once, hundreds of thousands of miles apart, in a dizzyingly-complex concert of mayhem....
Researchers have long suspected this kind of magnetic connection was possible. "The notion of 'sympathetic' flares goes back at least three quarters of a century,..
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/sc ... leruption/

mharratsc
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Re: MEGA SOLAR FILAMENT; let's observe this one

Unread post by mharratsc » Mon Dec 13, 2010 2:49 pm

Do you suppose there is any way, after a week or two goes by, to correlate such a large-scale event on the Sun with activity at the edge of the plasmasphere (via any of our 'bots on the fringe out there)? o.O
Mike H.

"I have no fear to shout out my ignorance and let the Wise correct me, for every instance of such narrows the gulf between them and me." -- Michael A. Harrington

fosborn
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Re: MEGA SOLAR FILAMENT; let's observe this one

Unread post by fosborn » Mon Dec 13, 2010 6:02 pm

I think the one at 12/12 , 0500 GMT, might have topped this one.
http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin ... ie_theater
LASCO3 enter the search dates 2010-12-12 through 2010-12-13

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solrey
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Re: MEGA SOLAR FILAMENT; let's observe this one

Unread post by solrey » Tue Dec 14, 2010 10:33 am

Oh the irony. :)

Lead story on Spaceweather.com about the August 1 eruptions:
GLOBAL ERUPTION ROCKS THE SUN: A global eruption on the sun has shattered old ideas about solar activity. Researchers presented their surprising findings at a press conference yesterday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. Get the full story from Science@NASA.
Then the third and last story, still up from yesterday, is about the most recent multiple eruption.
TRIPLE ERUPTION: Solar activity surged on Sunday, Dec. 12th, when the sun erupted three times in quick succession, hurling a trio of bright coronal mass ejections (CMEs) into space. Coronagraphs onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory recorded the action: Click here to play a 9 MB gif movie

A preliminary analysis suggests that none of the CMEs will be geoeffective. The expanding clouds should miss our planet.

Are these CMEs related? According to images from NASA's twin STEREO spacecraft and the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the clouds emerged from three distinct blast sites separated by great distances. In each case, a magnetic filament erupted--one near the sun's southeastern limb (CME#1), one near the north pole (CME#2), and one on the far side of the sun (CME#3). Because all three eruptions occurred within a matter of hours, the coronagraph images suggest a single 3-lobed cloud; in fact, they are distinct CMEs.
In the most recent event on Dec. 12, notice how CME's 2 and 3 occur along respective lines opposite from the "anchors" of a semi-horseshoe shaped CME#1. The southern anchor of CME#1 is mostly centered on a line with CME#2 in the northern hemisphere, while the northern anchor of CME#1 (just north of the solar equator) is mostly centered on a line with CME#3 in the southern hemisphere. They seem to be related to me. SDO images will probably show those three CME's were connected somehow.

Reminds me of some of the sungrazers that have triggered a smallish CME on the opposite side of the sun followed by a larger CME in the vicinity of the sungrazer. Hmmm. Could the curvature of the spherical electric field/double layers around the sun act like a concave reflector that focuses electromagnetic waves of a certain frequency/amplitude back inward/sunward to trigger CME's on the opposite side of that sphere?

cheers
“Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality"
Nikola Tesla

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