[South Florida DX Association] 'Dramatic' solar flare could disrupt Earth communications

[Bill]

  'Dramatic' solar flare could disrupt Earth communications

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This 2006 Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) Extreme ultraviolet 
Imaging Telescope ...

An unusual solar flare observed by a NASA space observatory on Tuesday 
could cause some disruptions to satellite communications and power on 
Earth over the next day or so, officials said.

The potent blast from the Sun unleashed a firestorm of radiation on a 
level not witnessed since 2006, and will likely lead to moderate 
geomagnetic storm activity by Wednesday, according to the National 
Weather Service.

"This one was rather dramatic," said Bill Murtagh, program coordinator 
at the NWS's Space Weather Prediction Center, describing the M-2 
(medium-sized) solar flare that peaked at 1:41 am Eastern time in the 
United States, or 0541 GMT.

"We saw the initial flare occurring and it wasn't that big but then the 
eruption associated with it -- we got energy particle radiation flowing 
in and we got a big coronal mass injection," he said.

"You can see all the materials blasting up from the Sun so it is quite 
fantastic to look at."

NASA's solar dynamics observatory, which launched last year and provided 
the high-definition pictures and video of the event, described it as 
"visually spectacular," but noted that since the eruption was not 
pointed directly at Earth, the effects were expected to remain "fairly 
small."

"The large cloud of particles mushroomed up and fell back down looking 
as if it covered an area of almost half the solar surface," said a NASA 
statement.

Murtagh said space weather analysts were watching closely to see whether 
the event would cause any collision of magnetic fields between the Sun 
and Earth, some 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) apart.

"Part of our job here is to monitor and determine whether it is 
Earth-directed because essentially that material that is blasting out is 
gas with magnetic field combined," he told AFP.

"In a day or so from now we are expecting some of that material to 
impact us here on Earth and create a geomagnetic storm," he said.

"We don't expect it to be any kind of a real severe one but it could be 
kind of a moderate level storm."

The Space Weather Prediction Center said the event is "expected to cause 
G1 (minor) to G2 (moderate) levels of geomagnetic storm activity 
tomorrow, June 8, beginning around 1800 GMT."

Any geomagnetic storm activity will likely be over within 12-24 hours.

"The Solar Radiation Storm includes a significant contribution of high 
energy protons, the first such occurrence of an event of that type since 
December 2006," the NWS said.

As many as 12 satellites and spacecraft are monitoring the heliosphere, 
and one instrument in particular on board NASA's lunar reconnaissance 
orbiter is measuring radiation and its effects.

"Certainly over the (two-year) lifetime of the mission this is the most 
significant event," said Harlan Spence, principal investigator for the 
cosmic ray telescope for the effects of radiation, or CRaTER.

"This is really exciting because ironically when we were developing the 
mission initially we thought we would be launching closer to a solar 
maximum when these big solar particle events typically occur," Spence 
told AFP.

"Instead we launched into a historic solar minimum that took a long, 
long time to wake up," he said.

"This is interesting and significant because it shows the Sun is 
returning to its more typical active state."

The resulting geomagnetic storm could cause some disruption in power 
grids, satellites that operate global positioning systems and other 
devices, and may lead to some rerouting of flights over the polar 
regions, Murtagh said.

"Generally it is not going to cause any big problems, it will just have 
to be managed," he said.

"If you fly from the United States to Asia, flying over the North Pole, 
there are well over a dozen flights every day," he added.

"During these big radiation storms some of these airlines will reroute 
the flights away from the polar regions for safety reasons to make sure 
they can maintain communications.

"People operating satellites would keep an eye on this, too, because 
geomagnetic storming can interfere with satellites in various ways 
whether it is the satellite itself or the signal coming down from the 
receiver."

The aurora borealis (Northern Lights) and aurora australis (Southern 
Lights) will also likely be visible in the late hours of June 8 or 9, 
NASA said.