October 23, 2003

Stormy Weather Brewing

Get out your umbrellas,.. well, they might not help for this storm:

A strong dose of space weather is forecast to hit Earth Friday, potentially disrupting satellite communications and posing a threat to power grids on Earth.

The storm of charged particles was unleashed by a dark region on the solar surface called Sunspot 484. The huge spot, about the size of Jupiter's surface, has been growing for several days and rotating into a position that now points squarely at Earth.
....
The sunspot let lose a storm of energetic particles, known as a coronal mass ejection at 3 a.m. ET Wednesday, according to forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The expanding cloud is expected to arrive midday Friday. It could produce a geomagnetic storm rated G3 on a scale that goes up to G5.

it will probably cause a little chaos with your cell phones as well.

Update: The Apostropher has some more links including this sweet up close and personal look at a sunspot.

Posted by Steve on October 23, 2003
Comments

Steve,

Think that was cool? You'll love the ones linked from here.

Posted by froz gobo at October 23, 2003 5:38 PM

Oops that didn't work. Try this:

http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/earthasart/

Posted by froz gobo at October 23, 2003 5:40 PM
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