Solar Flares

[MGmirkin]

This image of the sun was noticed by an ATS member the other day.

I think we may well see some patterns on the sun, if it is undergoing some
power/frequency changes, similar to those seen by the ancients.

Well, firstly, to those referring to this equating to something the ancients may have seen, let's be clear, the "ring" structure is NOT visible, as far as I can tell, to the naked eye. The SDO AIA instrument is viewing the sun in various wavelengths. The ones showing the apparent "ring" structure tend to be, from what I understand in wavelengths showing activity in spectra that highlight activity in the corona generally NOT visible to he naked eye. The photosphere-wavelength images all seem to show a sunspot in the upper left and a facula in the lower right, and not much else. It's just when we look at AIA 171 and 193 filters that we see the ring-like structure.

http://tinyurl.com/24p23h4

I think some of it is interesting placed coronal holes? Not sure what exactly, if anything, to read into it all?

If one looks at AIA 1600, 1700 4500, not much shows up...

http://tinyurl.com/2e7xplk

I think the former are showing coronal activity and the latter are showing 'visible' photospheric activity

Cheers,
~Michael Gmirkin

[mharratsc]

Soooo... does anyone think there is a link between this big honking event on the Sun, and the crazy North American 'inland hurricane' that is currently going on? o.O

[scotts]

Soooo... does anyone think there is a link between this big honking event on the Sun, and the crazy North American 'inland hurricane' that is currently going on? o.O

Me, Me, I do And the earthquakes and volcanoes erupting.

[mharratsc]

I'm no meteorologist, so forgive me if I don't use the appropriate jargon for this stuff, but...

I just watched on the Weather Channel a local meteorologist whom showed some kind of side-scan doppler radar that showed cloud heights, and he was remarking that one of these wall clouds that they were watching was somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 ft lower than what they would normally expect of one of those tornadic supercells..!

Any of our meteorologicallly-trained folks have any kind of an explanation for how this could be? o.O

Also- is anyone aware of a site that has a recent pic of the Van Allen belts in UV posted? I'm wondering if the belts are following the shapes of the jet streams (which I think are an effect of the Van Allen belt, personally) and I"m wondering if there isn't a huge knot in the Van Allen belt directly above North America that has this storm cell mirroring it from down below.

That's my suspicion, anyway!

[solrey]

Mike, those unusually low supercell tops are probably due to an upper level temperature inversion and/or wind shear as the fast moving cold dense air in the storm front slides under a warm moist airmass, pulled up from the Gulf ahead of it. The wind field gradients around the low pressure system are pretty tightly packed and the jet stream is above the storm front so I'd bet on wind shear basically "cutting the tops off" inversion suppressed supercells.

is anyone aware of a site that has a recent pic of the Van Allen belts in UV posted?

I think what you're looking for is the Radiation Belt Storm Probes Mission which isn't scheduled to be up until 2012. Not sure if there's any current "real time" monitoring.

---------------------------------------

Looking at the bigger picture, we started getting hit on or about the 24th by a high speed plasma stream from a coronal hole which triggered some geomagnetic "storms". That might have given a little boost to pre-existing "steady state" conditions. The filament disappeared around the limb of the sun around the 22nd I think. Other than the "coronal hole" (phase space hole in the outer sheath?) the suns been pretty quiet regardless of growing sunspot 1117.

Something to think about is that if the surface of the sun is indeed a double layer, then the photosphere is the inner charge sheath on the "high potential" side of the DL. The corona would be the outer charge sheath and the chromosphere would be the electric field between the two charge sheath layers. Events within the inner sheath (photosphere) that are shielded by and don't "punch through" the electric field are unlikely to have an effect on Earth, barring the existence of an as yet undiscovered resonance.

There are likely more clues available, beyond visual structures, as to cause and effect by looking at the sun/earth electro-magnetic system as a whole. A lot of relevant, current and archived, data on the solar and geomagnetic environment can be found at the Space Weather Prediction Center site.

cheers

[kiwi]

None taken...

Wasn't solar activity pretty much flat-lined in september of '09?

yeah mate (I hate to say) it was

but on a brighter note ..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSubC55KI2c

(if nothing else its a companion for your avatar pic )

[mharratsc]

My thinking was- if the Sun blew a concentrated blast of positive ions at us... would everything try and balance out by a huge 'scavenging' event on the Earth? A response of negative ions and electrons trying to head back?

Would that explain the giant spiraling vacuum cleaner generating the huge winds across the midwest, and the tornadic activity through the south and east? If this occured and we had a huge outflow of negative ions and electrons heading up into the sky, wouldn't that account for the sudden drop in temperature across North America? And if all that air was being lifted up, that would account for the sudden 'record low barometric pressure' we've seen... because the air was literally being lifted up towards the ionosphere by the charge motion.

Sigh,I'm probably way off, but having a huge scavenging event/exodus of negative ions in response to a huge positive outflow from the Sun seemed to account for so much. :\

[solrey]

MIke, you might be closer than you think. If the plasma jet from the coronal hole was strongly positively biased it would make sense that electrons would be scavenged from the magnetosphere/Earth system. One clue is in the electron count, available at the SWPC site I linked to , that showed a steep sudden drop in electron count around the time the plasma stream reached Earth about a day before the storm system began to really intensify.
Something to think about.

cheers

[jjohnson]

On the weather side again, the production of the most severe tornadic activity occurs when a jet stream's path takes it over large, unstable storms (cumulonimbus or thunderstorm cells). It is explained that this accelerates the rising air from the top of the storm quickly (Bernoulli effect) and increases the updraft velocities in the cell, which in turn creates the shear that initiates rotations that can lead to a tornado. It's all a complex process and I bet we haven't imagined the half of it, yet. I still think that it's quite possible that electric activity also accentuates this tendency toward powerful rotation, but precisely how it all ties together, and the range of the force variables involved is beyond current modeling capabilities.

[MrAmsterdam]

-
All quotes and links are from http://www.spaceweather.com/

23th

AURORA ALERT: High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras. A high-speed solar wind stream is buffeting Earth's magnetic field and causing polar geomagnetic storms.

24th

ARCTIC AURORA OUTBURST: On Oct. 24th, an outburst of color bright enough to rival the Moon spread across the skies of Scandinavia. Thilo Bubek sends this picture from the outskirts of Tromsø, Norway:
http://www.spaceweather.com/submissions ... 968852.jpg
http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php ... &year=2010

Also on the 24th of october the following warning was downgraded;

http://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php ... &year=2010
SEVERE STORM WARNING CANCELLED: NOAA forecasters have downgraded the chance of a severe geomagnetic storm on Oct. 25th to only 1%. Nevertheless, high-latitude sky watchers should remain alert for auroras as a solar wind stream continues to buffet Earth's magnetic field.

25th of october

FAST-GROWING SUNSPOT: Sunspot group 1117 more than tripled in size over the weekend: SDO movie. The active region has not yet produced a major eruption, but it is crackling with picturesque B-class solar flares. Stay tuned for updates.

28th

GIANT SUN TWISTER: Earlier today (Oct. 28th) a twisted filament of magnetism on the sun suddenly untwisted. The result was a spectacular eruption recorded in full-disk detail by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

At its peak, the twister--or rather, untwister--towered more than 350,000 km above the stellar surface. It appears to have hurled a fragment of itself into space, but not toward Earth; the blast was not geoeffective.

Now that the filament has relaxed, it is unlikely to erupt again. The next blast is more likely to come from big sunspot 1117, which NOAA forecasters say could produce an M-class solar flare. Readers with solar telescopes are encouraged to monitor developments.

My guess is that it is a part of your input energy for earthquakes and severe storms hitting earth - east first, west later - since the middle of october.

3 questions;

1 What criteria are used for AURORA ALERT's ?
2 What criteria are used for severe geomagnetic storm alerts? Why was this one downgraded?
3 If the blast was not geoeffective, what will happen with this "blast material"? Will it hit another planet? Any possibility it will make a turn an be "geo-effective"?

[MrAmsterdam]

It is interesting to see the perspective of Piers Corbyn, Meteorologist and Astrophysicist about sunspots and weatherimpact; He predicts extreme weather patterns up to 1 year in advance.

Piers Corbyn interviewed by Karen Frandsen from Eerie Investigations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-QLa4BX ... re=related
Karen Frandsen speaks with Meteorologist and Astrophysicist Piers Corbyn. They discuss weather prediction through Solar Sunspot activity, climate change and its causes, HAARP, chemtrails, green politics, and much more. For more information on Piers' work see http://www.weatheraction.com

[Aveo9]

3 questions;

1 What criteria are used for AURORA ALERT's ?
2 What criteria are used for severe geomagnetic storm alerts? Why was this one downgraded?
3 If the blast was not geoeffective, what will happen with this "blast material"? Will it hit another planet? Any possibility it will make a turn an be "geo-effective"?

1) I think generally if the solar wind speed gets above about 550 km/s and the Bz component of the magnetic field tips "south", then auroras are possible and an alert is given.

2) The amount of solar activity - so X-ray flux, electron flux, proton flux, and solar wind speed. These are caused by flares, coronal holes and CMEs.

3) I think the material from "blasts" typically heads directly out from the sun, expanding as it goes. If Earth isn't in the way then it won't have any effect on us. It would hit any other planet that's lying in the line of fire.

I use this site religiously for keeping track of what's going on with the sun and our local magnetosphere:
http://www.solarcycle24.com/
It's a gold mine of information!

Aveo

[The Great Dog]

Sunspot 1112

[seasmith]

LOOPING THE VIDEO
of the 1121 flare eruption yesterday:


http://spaceweather.com/

it looks like to two separate counter-rotating filaments,
perhaps then braiding in to a Birkelund type structure and spiraling out in to space.

holy caduseus, nice shot man

~

[mharratsc]

The bright activity in the the surrounding atmosphere prior to the big twist-up/discharge reminded me of a slowed-down video of lightning scavenging electrons from the surrounding cloud prior to the arc discharge of the bolt hitting the ground.