NASA spots extremely fast solar flare

August 15, 2012 by John M. Guilfoil

NASA's Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) spotted the super-fast CME — NASA’s Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) spotted the super-fast CME

July was a very active time for our sun, and evidence now suggests one powerful solar storm may have fired a wave of plasma and particles into space at a record speed.

A huge coronal mass ejection took place on July 23, and it blasted right by NASA’s two STEREO spaceships. The dual datapoints suggest the CME was moving 1,800 to 2,200 miles per second, or as fast as 7.92 million miles per hour, making it the fastest ejection every recorded.

“Between 1,800 and 2,200 miles per second puts it without question as one of the top five CMEs ever measured by any spacecraft,” said C. Alex Young, a NASA solar scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, in a statement. “And if it’s at the top of that velocity range, it’s probably the fastest.”

CME’s are usually harmless but they can trigger problems for satellites and power grids on Earth if they are aimed in our direction. July was a very active month for sun, with major X-class flares recorded.

The speedy July 23 CME was not fired at Earth.

BOOM: Sun erupts with X1.1 flare

July 7, 2012 by John M. Guilfoil

An X1.1-class solar flare (lower right) erupts from the sun on July 6, 2012, (NASA/SDO)

In the latest eruption of the summer, the sun has burst forth with an X1.1 flare, one of the largest types possible.

The flare came just after 7 p.m. Friday, according to the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center.

The flare came from a sunspot called Active Region 1515, which has been very active indeed recently, firing off more than a dozen medium Class M flares since July 3.

Space watchers had kept their eyes peeled for an X flare.

Active sun fires off its own fireworks with big flares July 4 and 5

July 6, 2012 by John M. Guilfoil

At 7:39 a.m., Active Region 1515 released an M6.1 class flare which peaked five minutes later. This image, taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), is shown in the 304 Angstrom wavelength, which is typically colorized in red and focuses on Helium in the chromosphere and transition region of the sun. (NASA/SDO/AIA)

The sun, in a particularly active part of its normal cycle, fired off big flares July 4 and 5, with the latter causing a moderate R2 radio blackout for a short time.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the M-class solar flare that peaked before 8 a.m. EDT. The flare came from a huge, 62,000-mile-long sunspot, called Active Region 1515, which has launched 12 of the large M-class flares since July 3.

M-class flares are the second largest to the giant X-class solar flares, as classified by scientists.

The active region has also produced coronal mass ejections, clouds of plasma and charged particles that, when hurled toward Earth, can disrupt satellites and cause electrical and communications problems. These particular CMEs do not present a danger to Earth at this time, but the sunspot is slowly rotating toward Earth, so we are not out of the woods yet.

“Stay tuned for updates as Region 1515 continues its march across the solar disk,” officials from the Space Weather Prediction Center, said in a statement.

Our sun goes through an 11-year cycle of solar weather. The current cycle is expect to peak next year before slowly calming down again.

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This image, captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, shows the M5.3 class solar flare that peaked on July 4, 2012, at 5:55 a.m.(NASA/SDO/AIA/Helioviewer)

Giant solar flare might literally be frying distant planet’s atmosphere

June 29, 2012 by John M. Guilfoil

A huge solar flare may be frying off the atmosphere of a Jupiter-size planet in a distant solar system.

Planet HD 189733b is the size of far away Jupiter, but it is situated only 1/30 the distance away from its sun as Earth. That’s closer than Mercury is to our sun. The surface of the planet is a whopping 1,830 degrees Fahrenheit.

HD 189733b was observed passing its star by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2010, and astronomers were expecting to see atmospheric gasses flying off the planet in the face of the intense heat that goes along with being that close to a star. Instead, it was oddly stable.

This artist's impression shows exoplanet HD 189733b, as it passes in front of its parent star, with atmosphere evaporating at a rate of over 1000 tons per second. (NASA/ESA illustration) — This artist’s impression shows exoplanet HD 189733b, as it passes in front of its parent star, with atmosphere evaporating at a rate of over 1000 tons per second. (NASA/ESA illustration)

But last year, right before HD 189733b passed its sun again, Hubble observed a massive flare erupt. When the planet came back into view, astronomers noticed a massive plume of atmospheric gasses erupting from the planet.

Astronomers believe the intense x-rays from the flare caused the planet’s atmosphere to evaporate at a rate of almost 1,000 tons per second. It is a fascinating, if tragic, glimpse into the effects of cosmic weather far from home.

“We hadn’t just confirmed that some planets’ atmosphere evaporate, we had watched the physical conditions in the evaporating atmosphere vary over time,” said Alain Lecavelier des Etangs, of the National Center for Scientific Research in France, who headed up the study on this phenomenon, in a statement. “Nobody had done that before.”

Specific atmospheric gases can be detected thanks to the backlighting effect created when a planet passes by its sun. This technique was used on Venus recently, when it transited the sun.

Scientists can’t definitively say that the flare caused the atmosphere to melt off the planet, but teams are planning to do follow-up tests with Hubble and the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope.

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