Aurora Alert! Solar Flare Heading Our Way
This image shows a three and a half hour (0000 – 0330 UT) time lapse movie of the flare and filament event. Credit: NASA/SDO
An active sunspot (1123) erupted early this morning (Nov. 12th), producing a C4-class solar flare and apparently hurling a filament of material in the general direction of Earth. Coronagraph images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and NASA’s twin STEREO spacecraft show a faint coronal mass ejection emerging from the blast site and heading off in a direction just south of the sun-Earth line. The cloud could deliver a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field sometime on Nov. 14th or 15th. High latitude sky watchers could see auroras on those dates. (…) Read the rest of Aurora Alert! Solar Flare Heading Our Way (59 words)
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(C) nancy for Universe Today, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us Post
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