CHANCE OF FLARES TODAY: Don't be surprised if there is a solar flare today. NOAA forecasters say there is a 75% chance of M-flares and a 15% chance of X-flares on Dec. 15th. With 11 numbered sunspot groups crossing the face of the sun, odds are good that any eruption will be geoeffective. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text.
INCREASING SOLAR ACTIVITY: Yesterday, fast-growing sunspot AR3165 unleashed a remarkable series of M-class solar flares. All day long, no more than a few hours went by without a significant explosion:
During the fusillade, the sunspot strobed Earth with more than 10 pulses of extreme ultraviolet and X-radiation. The resulting ionization of Earth's upper atmosphere caused a series of shortwave radio blackouts rolling across all longitudes. Aviators and mariners may have noticed poor reception at frequencies below 15 MHz.
Many of the flares hurled CMEs into space. Preliminary coronagraph data from SOHO suggest that all of them will miss Earth, passing upstream of our planet. Maybe next time? Another large sunspot, AR3163, has an unstable 'beta-gamma' magnetic field that poses a threat for M-class flares--and it is directly facing Earth. Stay tuned! Solar flare alerts: SMS Text.
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IT'S RAINING GEMINIDS: Last night, pieces of rock comet 3200 Phaethon rained over Mt. Hopkins in Arizona. John Ashley photographed the downpour:
"I pointed my camera at Smithsonian's MMT Observatory on top of Mount Hopkins," says Ashley. "Over a 4 hour period I captured 35 Geminid meteors."
The Geminid meteor shower peaked on Dec. 14th when Earth passed through Phaethon's gravelly stream of debris. Bright moonlight interfered with the display, reducing visible meteor rates by a factor of 2, but there were still plenty of bright ones. Observers with the International Meteor Organization have reported hundreds of sightings.
more images: from Gary Dowdle of Fort Davis, TX; from Jeff Berkes of Assateague Island National Seashore, MD; from Frankie Lucena of Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico; from Adam Hurcewicz of Bialystok, Poland; from Masayuki Nakamura of Otawara, Tochigi, Japan;
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