The sun has passed from one of its 11-year activity cycles into another. Scientists predict the new cycle will be about as calm as the previous one.| EarthSky | Updates on your cosmos and world
Cannibal CME A double load of plasma. It occurs when two CMEs erupt off the sun at the same time. If the second CME overtakes and consumes the first, a CME combination forms. Cannibal CMEs contain tangled magnetic fields and compressed plasmas, which can cause severe geomagnetic storms.| EarthSky
Artist’s concept of activity on the sun traveling across space, to interact with Earth’s magnetic field. Not to scale. The sun’s activity can cause a geomagnetic storm, which aren’t harmful to humans, but which can harm earthly technologies. Image via Wikimedia Commons.What happens during a geomagnetic storm?| EarthSky
Coronal mass ejection on February 27, 2000. A disk blocks out the light of the sun. The white circle indicates the sun’s surface. Learn more about coronal mass ejections here. Image via SOHO.What are coronal mass ejections?| EarthSky
GOES SERIES MISSION NOAA’s most sophisticated Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES), known as the GOES-R Series, provide…| National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service
View full size. | World map of time zones. UTC (0) is the green vertical stripe just to the left of center. Image via TimeZonesBoy/ CIA/ Wikimedia.Time zones| EarthSky
Satellite views of Earth on the solstices and equinoxes. From left to right, a June solstice, a September equinox, a December solstice and a March equinox. To understand these images, look at the poles. Notice that at the June solstice, the North Pole is in sunlight. At the December solstice, the South Pole is in sunlight. Read more about these images, which are via Robert Simmon (Sigma Space Corporation)/ NASA.June solstice in 2024| EarthSky
At superior conjunction, Venus or Mercury are behind the sun from Earth. At inferior conjunction, Venus or Mercury are between the Earth and sun. At greatest elongation, Venus or Mercury are most to one side of the sun. Around greatest elongation, these inner planets, Mercury and Venus, are at their greatest distances from the sun on our sky’s dome. Chart via EarthSky.What is an elongation?| EarthSky
On New Year’s Eve 2023, the sun blasted a huge X flare, the biggest of solar cycle 25 so far. It came from sunspot region AR3536 and measured X5 on the solar flare intensity scale. The eruption produced a wave that rippled across the sun’s face in all directions. It produced a coronal mass ejection, or CME, a great clump of superheated matter that left the sun and traveled outward into our solar system. | EarthSky
Coronal holes appear as dark areas in the solar corona in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and soft x-ray solar images. They appear dark because they are cooler, less dense regions than the surrounding plasma and are regions of open, unipolar magnetic fields. This open, magnetic field line structure allows the solar wind to escape more readily into space, resulting in streams of relatively fast solar wind and is often referred to as a high speed stream in the context of analysis of structures in int...| www.swpc.noaa.gov
The solar wind continuously flows outward from the Sun and consists mainly of protons and electrons in a state known as a plasma. Solar magnetic field is embedded in the plasma and flows outward with the solar wind. | www.swpc.noaa.gov
Sun news for November 12-13, 2024. NOAA is forecasting active (kp=4) geomagnetic conditions for tonight and tomorrow, with the possibility of a G1 storm (Kp=5). This is due to fast solar wind from a coronal hole on the Earth-facing solar disk. Image via NOAASun news November 13: Auroras possible tonight and tomorrow| EarthSky
Solar radiation storms occur when a large-scale magnetic eruption, often causing a coronal mass ejection and associated solar flare, accelerates charged particles in the solar atmosphere to very high velocities. The most important particles are protons which can get accelerated to large fractions of the speed of light. At these velocities, the protons can traverse the 150 million km from sun to Earth in just 10’s of minutes or less. When they reach Earth, the fast moving protons penetrate t...| www.swpc.noaa.gov
Solar flares are large eruptions of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun lasting from minutes to hours. The sudden outburst of electromagnetic energy travels at the speed of light, therefore any effect upon the sunlit side of Earth’s exposed outer atmosphere occurs at the same time the event is observed. The increased level of X-ray and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) radiation results in ionization in the lower layers of the ionosphere on the sunlit side of Earth. Under normal conditions, high...| www.swpc.noaa.gov
The NOAA Space Weather Scales were introduced as a way to communicate to the general public the current and future space weather conditions and their possible effects on people and systems. Many of the SWPC products describe the space environment, but few have described the effects that can be experienced as the result of environmental disturbances. These scales are useful to users of our products and those who are interested in space weather effects. The scales describe the environmental dis...| www.swpc.noaa.gov
