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Wednesday, August 4, 2010

And the Sun wakes up

Yeah, the NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory keeps an 'eye' on the Sun and it has been found on August 1st at 0855 GMT that there was a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) an eruption of charged particle from the northern hemisphere of sun. Such CMEs are usual feature of sun depending upon the place of sun in its 11 year cycle. The sun follows this periodic variation called Solar Cycle in which the spots (sunspots) on its surface change in number. Depending upon the variation in the number of sunspots, the sun erupts particles and extra energy other than the normal solar light and energy.

The CME under discussion is likely to produce Solar Tsunami and it is unique of its kind as it is directed towards earth. The speed of this travelling mass has been estimated as 93 million miles per day, so it would strike the earth on August 4th and we may see the Auroras at north and south poles, mainly the people in Canada and USA can see this lighting produced after the interaction between charged particle and  air molecules in the atmosphere of earth.

Other effects may be the drag of the satellites, disruption of high frequency communication, threat to power lines etc.

The Space Weather Prediction Center mentions this situation as G2 geomagnetic storm, as scaled by NOAA.

1 comment:

  1. [...] it has happened as predicted, in my recent article And the Sun wakes up, it has been a 12-hour long geomagnetic storm which produced aurora covering the entire northern [...]

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