[South Florida DX Association] Time to put the aluminium foil in your hat

[Norman Alexander]

Subject: Time to put the aluminium foil in your hat
 
BIG EVENTS ON THE SUN: This morning around 0855 UT, Earth orbiting  satellites 
detected a C3-class solar flare. The origin of the blast was sunspot  1092. At 
about the same time, an enormous magnetic filament stretching across  the sun's 
northern hemisphere erupted. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory  recorded the 
action:

Click to launch a 304 Å movie

The timing of  these events suggest they are connected, and a review of SDO 
movies strengthens  that conclusion. Despite the ~400,000 km distance between 
them, the sunspot and  filament seem to erupt together; they are probably 
connected by long-range  magnetic fields. In this movie (171 Å), a shadowy shock 
wave (a "solar tsunami")  can be seen emerging from the flare site and rippling 
across the northern  hemisphere into the filament's eruption zone. That may have 
helped propel the  filament into space.

In short, we have just witnessed a complex global  eruption involving almost the 
entire Earth-facing side of the sun.

A  coronal mass ejection (CME) produced by the event is heading directly for 
Earth:  SOHO movie. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras when 
it  arrives on or about August 3rd.




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