Solar and Aurora Activity Chat

[coffee lover]

Hi, I was wondering if someone could confirm to me that the northern lights could be seen as far south as the isle of wight last night, Facebook was mad last with people talking about it. I could see a green glow out to my north..

[GeorgeWX]

Yesterday I discovered something of interest about the Aurorawatch magnetometer (the favoured device for detecting geomagnetic storms over the UK).

Some regulars on here may recall me saying some time ago that the aurora alert system on the aurorawatch website was rubbish, so rubbish that I've never signed up for the alerts in the 7 years I've used the magentometer! Well what has happened in the last few months was they amended the threshold required for an alert to be issued. Now it is far better as an alert system compared to 6 months ago and I have proof to show of this.

Here's a snapshot of the aurorawatch magnetometer that I saved soon after a geomagnetic storm on the 4th of February 2011, The planetery kp of this disturbance was KP6 but you can see those green bars at the bottom of the graph never turned yellow which is the indicator for minor storming and a yellow alert. No alert was given on this night despite the fact that the aurora would have been clearly visible in the night sky as far south as Yorkshire.

Look now to the exact same magnetometer graph from the same night that I pulled off the aurorawatch website just yesterday, the only slight difference with this graph is it's a 24hr period from 12am and the other one was a grab from the rolling graph, the actual data is the exact same. What's not the same though is those green bars are now yellow and even red! So aurorawatch changed the thresholds on all the old graphs within their archive as well.

Today's sunspot number is a low one at just 31 and has been below 80 since 02/02/12. Solar flux at 8pm was 103 and has persisted at around this level for two weeks.

Large sunspot 1422 continues to decay slowly as does 1420. Old sunspot 1410 has re-emerged over the eastern limb and is labelled 'New1'

Two cme's have occurred during the last 24 hours, neither are earth directed.

Today's sun

Hi, I was wondering if someone could confirm to me that the northern lights could be seen as far south as the isle of wight last night, Facebook was mad last with people talking about it. I could see a green glow out to my north..

Normally when auroral activity manages to get south enough for sightings in Wales and the midlands, the Germans will see a display too due to their geomagnetic latitude. There is a forum all about aurora and propagation (german based) but it's all quiet there with no reports from last night. Geomagnetic activity was very quiet last night and aurora may have been visible from the arctic regions but not much further south.

Edited February 23, 2012 by GeorgeWX

[GeorgeWX]

In the last 5 hours there has been some quite amazing solar imagery coming in. The last 36 hour period we see two filament eruptions from the far north east quadrant (top left of the sun). One of the eruptions was very bright, both of them incredibly slow and both of them unlikely to be geo-effective.

But this same corner of the sun has really woken up in the last few hours.

There is a HUGE filament in the process of erupting and a massive coronal hole has appeared as if from nowhere as a direct result of this highly buoyant activity. It's far too early to say anything more with certainty as this event is still ongoing. I will attach a couple of the images showing what I'm talking about.

Goes SXI, huge filament upper left and large coronal hole appearing.

Two images from SDO, the first taken around 12 hours ago before the event commenced.

And the most recent snapshot clearly shows the departing filament and huge coronal hole opening.

My hunch on this one is we will have a large and dense cme with a trajectory that includes earth, I'll pop back on this evening with some movies showing this incredible event in full.

Edited February 24, 2012 by GeorgeWX

[Crepuscular Ray]

In the last 5 hours there has been some quite amazing solar imagery coming in. The last 36 hour period we see two filament eruptions from the far north east quadrant (top left of the sun). One of the eruptions was very bright, both of them incredibly slow and both of them unlikely to be geo-effective.

But this same corner of the sun has really woken up in the last few hours.

There is a HUGE filament in the process of erupting and a massive coronal hole has appeared as if from nowhere as a direct result of this highly buoyant activity. It's far too early to say anything more with certainty as this event is still ongoing. I will attach a couple of the images showing what I'm talking about.

Goes SXI, huge filament upper left and large coronal hole appearing.

Two images from SDO, the first taken around 12 hours ago before the event commenced.

And the most recent snapshot clearly shows the departing filament and huge coronal hole opening.

My hunch on this one is we will have a large and dense cme with a trajectory that includes earth, I'll pop back on this evening with some movies showing this incredible event in full.

Until George can do some spectacular movies this evening, here's an indication of the size of one of the flares/CMEs. This one doesn't look Earth-directed, but I'll be happy to be proved wrong.

[GeorgeWX]

Until George can do some spectacular movies this evening, here's an indication of the size of one of the flares/CMEs. This one doesn't look Earth-directed, but I'll be happy to be proved wrong.

The still image you post is one of the prior cme's from the NE quadrant heading off into space. I agree that this particular blast is likely to miss us but the event I speak about will not appear in the Lascos for a good few hours yet.

I'm pretty confident that his huge eruption will head our way.

Here's a little movie of where we are at the now, the sequence begins at midnight and ends at 7am, the last few frames you can see the filament beginning to pop.

It's apparently HD quality, give it a few seconds to load

Edited February 24, 2012 by GeorgeWX

[karyo]

Solar flux down to 103 again with only two small spots on the visible side of the sun!

Karyo

[GeorgeWX]

Very little additional data has come through since 7am this morning. New Lasco images are now appearing but they have omitted the interesting bit, there's no new images from SDO since 7am (see video above).

The only data coming through is low-res beacon data from the Stereo duo. Based on that data alone there does appear to be a cme heading in our general direction. Incredibly slow at 450 or maybe 500km/s at most but this may get enhanced en-route by the high speed wind stream from a coronal hole that opened during and immediately after the eruption.

If all the above turns out to be correct then we should expect a period of (at least) minor geomagnetic storming sometime during 27/02 with the coronal hole influence close behind causing just active conditions once it becomes the dominant force.

NOAA issue their nightly space weather forecast at 10pm here, these guys are likely to have the most recent imagery at their disposal so I look forward to their analysis.

Spaceweather.com have stepped forward with their prediction and they go for a miss.

Edited February 24, 2012 by GeorgeWX

[GeorgeWX]

SDO are yet to share those sun pics from 24/02, there's a short blurb on their website explaining how the system is offline through no fault of their own. Lascos are finally up now and a faint cme can be seen heading in our direction.

It does seem that one filament managed to produce two eruptions just minutes apart with a large eruption heading north away from the sun and a second burst heading in our general direction.

Without SDO imagery its hard to see the exact aftermath of the eruption. Another satellite up there named 'GOES' has a live feed showing low resolution images of the sun. From there, huge post eruptive loops develop across almost one half of the sun as all the material that didn't escape comes crashing back down on the solar surface. The hi-res imagery from SDO will show this in immense detail and will probably become the most visually stimulating solar eruption we have seen so far in SC24.

All solar forecasts out there (apart from spaceweather.com) are predicting minor storm periods for 27/02 as a result of this cme passing us.

There is yet another flareless cme that can be seen leaving the sun late last night, the source being a region near the eastern limb .The eruption can be seen heading southwards which makes a nice change to all this activity we have seen in the northern hemisphere. The culprit could be newly numbered sunspot 1424 but more imagery will need to come through to confirm source and also direction. It does look like it will miss us. There is an enhanced stream of protons hitting earth as a result of this eruption, however not enough to reach storm thresholds.

Sunspot number at 47 and solar flux at 109.

Today's sun

Edited February 25, 2012 by GeorgeWX

[Crepuscular Ray]

According to spaceweather.com the Goddard Space Weather Lab have issued a forecast of a possible CME impact tomorrow (26th) at 13.30 UTC (+/- 7 hrs), which might cause up to G2 class geomagnetic storms. Nothing serious, just possible high-latitude disturbances, precautionary measures to perhaps put satellites into safer modes and aurorae possibly visible in the US as far south as New York (so unlikely to be visible from anywhere but the north of the UK because of the position of the magnetic north pole, if anything happens).

The spaceweather.com report doesn't mention whether this is related to yesterday morning's events, but it seems probable.

[yamkin]

According to spaceweather.com the Goddard Space Weather Lab have issued a forecast of a possible CME impact tomorrow (26th) at 13.30 UTC (+/- 7 hrs), which might cause up to G2 class geomagnetic storms. Nothing serious, just possible high-latitude disturbances, precautionary measures to perhaps put satellites into safer modes and aurorae possibly visible in the US as far south as New York (so unlikely to be visible from anywhere but the north of the UK because of the position of the magnetic north pole, if anything happens).

The spaceweather.com report doesn't mention whether this is related to yesterday morning's events, but it seems probable.

G2 = Moderate: Kp = 6

Power systems: high-latitude power systems may experience voltage alarms, long-duration storms may cause transformer damage.

Spacecraft operations: corrective actions to orientation may be required by ground control; possible changes in drag affect orbit predictions.

Other systems: HF radio propagation can fade at higher latitudes, and aurora has been seen as low as New York and Idaho (typically 55° geomagnetic lat.)

[yamkin]

NASA ALERT - INCOMING CME TO HIT EARTH 26TH FEBRUARY 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t8iWxH2Y38

[GeorgeWX]

According to spaceweather.com the Goddard Space Weather Lab have issued a forecast of a possible CME impact tomorrow (26th) at 13.30 UTC (+/- 7 hrs), which might cause up to G2 class geomagnetic storms. Nothing serious, just possible high-latitude disturbances, precautionary measures to perhaps put satellites into safer modes and aurorae possibly visible in the US as far south as New York (so unlikely to be visible from anywhere but the north of the UK because of the position of the magnetic north pole, if anything happens).

The spaceweather.com report doesn't mention whether this is related to yesterday morning's events, but it seems probable.

Nice arrival time, a little earlier than most other predictions out there but these guys were spot on when forecasting the last cme arrival time. A cme impact more towards 6-7pm tomorrow night would suit us nicely.

The potential southern extent of visible aurora due to this cme passage is very hard to forecast, it really depends on the density of the incoming cloud as well as what sort of additional energy the coronal hole has given in propelling the cme towards us.

Movie of filament eruption in blue wavelength (3.4MB)

Composite wavelength (3.8MB)

The filament can be seen snaking across from close to centre disk to the east before turning northwards and disappearing over the limb. A truly monster sized filamentr eruption.

There is yet another flareless cme that can be seen leaving the sun late last night, the source being a region near the eastern limb .The eruption can be seen heading southwards which makes a nice change to all this activity we have seen in the northern hemisphere. The culprit could be newly numbered sunspot 1424 but more imagery will need to come through to confirm source and also direction. It does look like it will miss us. There is an enhanced stream of protons hitting earth as a result of this eruption, however not enough to reach storm thresholds.

The source of this cme was not 1424 but another unstable filament, this one located on the south eastern quadrant.

Edited February 25, 2012 by GeorgeWX

[frogesque]

Hopefully some earth directed activity for next weekend as I'll be in one of the best UK dark sky locations!

[GeorgeWX]

Hopefully some earth directed activity for next weekend as I'll be in one of the best UK dark sky locations!

Fingers crossed, there may not be much flare activity but sol sure is letting off some steam at the moment!

Your dark sky spot, somewhere in D&G? I head out there every chance I get for some peace and quiet as well as a bit of stargazing, can't beat it!

NASA ALERT - INCOMING CME TO HIT EARTH 26TH FEBRUARY 2012

Hey Yam nice upload, the part with Lasco c3 shows the wrong cme though, that was the blast off the SE limb late in the day. The cme first appears in the Lasco images during the early hours of 24/02. C3 shows very little of the earth directed cloud due to the concurrent northward blast 'blinding' the camera so to speak.

edit: my mistake its cor2 you have on the vid, the relevant cme first appears in cor2 late on 23/02. Big blast heading north with second cloud heading towards earth around 4am. Visible on A and B.

Edited February 25, 2012 by GeorgeWX

[pottyprof]

Stumbled across this aurora forecasting model. Some links in the description to help you understand where the data comes from too, which is always helpful.

http://helios.swpc.noaa.gov/ovation/

[yamkin]

NOAA Space Weather Scale for Geomagnetic Storms

Scale = G1

Minor Level

Power systems: weak power grid fluctuations can occur.

Spacecraft operations: minor impact on satellite operations possible.

Other systems: migratory animals are affected at this and higher levels; aurora is commonly visible at high latitudes

K-indices of 5 or greater indicate storm-level geomagnetic activity around earth.

Edited February 27, 2012 by yamkin

[yamkin]

GEOMAGNETIC STORM IN PROGRESS - 27th February 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbuLMUOQP7I

[yamkin]

Kp Index down to level 2

K-indices of 5 or greater indicate storm-level geomagnetic activity around earth.

[karyo]

Another day with a quiet sun. Only two small spots can be seen and the solar flux is at 103. www.spaceweather.com

This is now turning to be a lengthy quiet spell which is remarkable considering we are not far from the solar maximum!

Karyo

[Crepuscular Ray]

The promising looking sunspot just emerging over the limb let off an M3 flare sometime yesterday. X-ray flux back up a bit to 108.

[GeorgeWX]

Another day with a quiet sun. Only two small spots can be seen and the solar flux is at 103. www.spaceweather.com

This is now turning to be a lengthy quiet spell which is remarkable considering we are not far from the solar maximum!

Karyo

You're not wrong Karyo, remember things went quieter somewhere around the start of Decenber, and here we are at the start of March, the lowest NOAA sunspot number of just 22 on Wednesday followed by two days at 24. The region responsible for the recent M3 flare that CR has just mentioned is likely (on it's own) to boost sn above 60 and flux above 120.

So are we near the end of a three month solar depression, the ending of which would be marked with a peak that was higher than the previous peak we had a few months back, or are we really entering a long quiet solar spell reminisent of the Dalton cycle. We'll know the answer for sure by the end of the year.

The new sunspot appearing over the eastern limb is a very active and compact region. Already we see the M3 flare and cme yesterday but was still behind the limb when this occured. Just in the last few hours has the full active region revealed itself. The next 24 hours we should expect multiple C-class flares with more M-class flaring possible. An isolated X-class flare can't be ruled out.

Edited March 3, 2012 by GeorgeWX

[GeorgeWX]

Today's sun

[yamkin]

Powerful M Class Solar Flare Will Effect Earth and Satellites

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjjv4U-VqEI

[Crepuscular Ray]

Hi Yamkin

I suspect your source might be getting unnecessarily excited - that flare and CME were not Earth-directed, as the active region was just over the solar limb as seen from here, and are unlikely to affect us. The Stereo craft (can't remember whether it's A or http://cdn.nwstatic.co.uk/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cool.png that's that side of the Sun might notice, but its controllers have had plenty of warning and can take precautions.

Edited March 3, 2012 by crepuscular ray

[yamkin]

Hi Yamkin

I suspect your source might be getting unnecessarily excited - that flare and CME were not Earth-directed, as the active region was just over the solar limb as seen from here, and are unlikely to affect us. The Stereo craft (can't remember whether it's A or http://cdn.nwstatic.co.uk/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cool.png that's that side of the Sun might notice, but its controllers have had plenty of warning and can take precautions.

crepuscular ray, My source is Space.com This is an update

Edited March 3, 2012 by yamkin