SOMETHING FLARE-Y THIS WAY COMES: A new and active sunspot is emerging over the sun's eastern limb. It announced itself on July 4th with an X1.3-class solar flare:
Ionizing radiation from the flare caused a shortwave radio blackout over North America. Ham radio operators may have noticed loss of signal at frequencies below 20 MHz around 2041 UTC.
The flare also produced a fast CME, but it will miss Earth. We won't be in this sunspot's strike zone for a few more days. Stay tuned. Solar flare Alerts: SMS Text
MIDSUMMER GEOMAGNETIC STORM: Midsummer auroras are rare, but on the night of July 3/4 they blanketed the USA. The display was caused by a CME strike, which sparked a strong G3-class geomagnetic storm.
"The auroras were visible with the naked eye alone, a really strong and active display," reports Aaron Watson, who photographed dancing curtains of red above the West Elk Mountains of Colorado:
"I set up this timelapse on my camera and watched with just my eyes," he adds. "I loved watching the pillars of diffuse light grow and drift over the horizon with some nice moments of jaw dropping awe... wow!"
We've received aurora reports from New Mexico, Nebraska, Texas, Kentucky, Utah, Colorado, Washington, Pennsylvania, New York, Idaho, Virginia, Wyoming, Ohio, Oregon, Nevada, California, Arizona--and almost every northern-tier state near the US-Canadian border.
It is unusual to have such a strong display so close to the summer solstice. Two reasons: (1) Short summer nights narrow the observing window. (2) Auroras dislike solstices. The same Russell-McPherron Effect that boosts auroras around equinoxes also suppresses auroras around solstices. Yin-yang.
It took an "X-class CME" to overcome these obstacles.The storm cloud that hit us on July 3rd was launched by an X1-class solar flare three days earlier.
Did you miss the show? Next time get a heads-up from our new Backyard Astronomy Alert Service.
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