On October 1st around 10:17 UT, widely-spaced sunspots 1302 and 1305 erupted in quick succession, revealing a long-distance entanglement which was not obvious before. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) recorded the movie of the double blast:Since it was
A CME hit Earth’s magnetic field on Sept. 26th, sparking one of the strongest magnetic storms in years. At the peak of the Kp=8 disturbance, auroras were sighted around both poles and more than half a dozen US states. Magnetic reverberations continued for more than 48
The first of several CMEs en route to Earth struck our planet’s magnetic field on Sept. 9th around 1130UT. The impact sparked a strong (Kp=7) geomagnetic storm, which is now subsiding. Last night Northern Lights were spotted in the United States as far south
Yesterday, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory witnessed a spectacular explosion on the sun that seemed to pass perilously close to Venus.As the movie shows, the CME passed harmlessly. There was no collision, and it wasn’t even close. Although Venus seems to be
Double sunspot 1263 is a whopper. Its two dark cores are each wider than Earth, and the entire region stretches more than 65,000 km from end to end. The clarity of image is impressive. Note the granulation of the stellar surface surrounding the main dark cores.
Mysterious and gigantic jets of lightning that shoot up to near the edge of space have now been observed in unprecedented detail, revealing just how much charge they pack and how they form. More than 50 miles (80 kilometers) above Earth's surface, extreme…
A fast-moving stream of solar wind is buffeting Earth’s magnetic field. The combined effect of this stream plus a CME expected to arrive soon has prompted NOAA forecasters to declare a 30% to 35% chance of geomagnetic storms on June 23-24. High-latitude sky watchers
A CME propelled toward Earth by the “solstice solar flare” of June 21st may be moving slower than originally thought. Analysts at the GSFC Space Weather Lab have downgraded the cloud’s probable speed from 800 km/s to 650 km/s. Impact is now expected on June 24th at
WASHINGTON — NASA-sponsored research has resulted in the first computer model that explains the recent period of decreased solar activity during the sun’s 11-year cycle.This recent solar minimum, a period characterized by a lower frequency of sunspots and solar
Mapping the Earth’s magnetic field – to find oil, track storms or probe the planet’s interior – typically requires expensive satellites. University of California, Berkeley, physicists have now come up with a much cheaper way to measure the Earth’s magnetic field
