I get email alerts for solar flares (interested as I am in a heads-up for aurora opportunities this far south) and there are usually three emails in fairly fast succession (for ordinary M flares). You get one email at the start of an event, a second one after the thing has peaked and started back down, and finally a third when it crosses a certain "ending" threshold. Usually the gap between the first to the third is only 15-30 minutes. About noon yesterday I realized that I had gotten email #1 but at around 11:20 AM but hadn't seen the 2nd one yet and it was 12:09 PM. Shot my son-in-law an email that this might be an X-Flare and then went to check it out. Yep. It had just peaked and was starting back down and was at X1.2 as I viewed the data.
It was an X-Flare (X1.4 at maximum) and most definitely earth-directed. It almost immediately affected radio wave propogation here on the home planet. The bad news is that 1.4 isn't far into X-Flare territory. The last time I could find an earth-directed X-Flare was March 11, 2011 (an X1.5) and it seemed to result in photo submissions of aurora only as far south as Michigan/Minnesota/Wisconsin, so my chances of seeing it from Nebraska (assuming no clouds obscure the north) may be slim. I plan to be out though, just in case. The good news is that there is no moon until 2:30 AM and then only a waning crescent. Check your moonrise time here: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/moonrise.html Also, if you are up (or still up) before dawn on Sat. morning, you'll have a nice planet grouping near the moon in the Pleaides before dawn: http://earthsky.org/tonight/moon-near-pleaides-approaching-jupiter-venus The other good news is that the sunspot group that shot this thing at us is still aimed at earth and there is a darn good chance (35%) that it will spit out another one within the next 48 hours. If it does, the 1-2 punch could *really* light up the magnetosphere over the weekend. Technically, the flare results in various stuff being thrown at us, but is not *itself* headed at us. If that were possible we'd be incinerated. We got strobed by extreme UV and X-Rays almost immediately. What we are waiting for to hit tonight is the CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) which will compress and charge the magnetosphere when it hits, resulting in aurora. Space.com allegedly has videos (but I can't get them to come up on any of my devices so far): http://www.space.com/16562-solar-storm-watch-massive-x-flare-explodes-from-sun-video.html http://www.space.com/16574-massive-earth-directed-x-flare-from-sun-multiple-video-views.html -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
