CHANCE OF FLARES TODAY: Behemoth sunspot AR3112 is poised to explode. NOAA forecasters estimate a 65% chance of M-flares and a 30% chance of X-flares today. Any eruptions will be geoeffective as the sunspot is almost directly faciing Earth. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text
OH SNAP! A MAGNETIC FILAMENT ERUPTS (UPDATED): Yesterday, Oct. 4th, a 200,000-km long filament of magnetism in the sun's southern hemisphere erupted. Snapping like a rubber band, it hurled part of itself into space:
Debris from the blast might be heading for Earth. SOHO coronagraphs saw hints of a CME emerging from the blast site--but the data stream stopped before the full CME was visible. The missing data should arrive later today.
Update: NOAA analysts have modeled the emergent CME and determined that a glancing blow to Earth's magnetosphere is possible on Oct. 8th. Coronagraph data for this event remain patchy, however, which adds uncertainty to the forecast. If the CME does strike Earth it could happen as early as Oct. 7th or as late as Oct 9th. Aurora alerts: SMS Text
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DECONSTRUCTING A CANNIBAL CME: Yesterday, a Cannibal CME was supposed to hit Earth. It might have arrived in bits and pieces. Solar wind data from Oct. 3rd and 4th seem to contain signatures from multiple CMEs. One of them did this:
"Absolutely insane red pillars showed up above Limfjord in my hometown in Denmark," reports photographer Ruslan Merzlyakov. "It was epic!"
Merzlyakov's photo shows that cannibalism is not required for a great display.
Cannibal CMEs form when a fast-moving CME devours one or more slower CMEs ahead of it. The combined clouds contain tangled magnetic fields that do a good job sparking auroras. Forecasters expected such a CME to arrive on Oct. 4th--a potent mash-up of lesser CMEs that left the sun in late Sept. and Oct. 1st. Instead, the CMEs appear to have arrived one at a time, creating outbursts of light from Scandinavia to Canada.
Click on the links for more examples: from Miquel Such of Abisko, Sweden; from Marianne Bergli of Troms, Norway; from Markus Varik of Tromsø, Norway; from P-M Hedén of Vallentuna, Sweden; from Catalin Tapardel of Alberta, Canada; from Franz Josef Natschlaeger of Sandviken, Sweden; from Hanna Berger of Andenes, Norway;
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RARE MR. SPOCK ORNAMENT: It's the logical way to decorate your Christmas tree--with a rare Mr. Spock ornament. This one has been to the edge of space. On Sept. 22, 2022, the students of Earth to Sky Calculus launched Spock to the stratosphere on board a cosmic ray research balloon:
You can have it for $129.95. The students are selling Spock ornaments to pay the helium bill for their cosmic ray ballooning program. Made by Hallmark in the 1990s, the ornament comes with a greeting card showing the science officer in flight and telling the story of its trip to the stratosphere and back again.
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