11~14~11~SUN WEATHER UPDATE~ HIGH ACTVITY~THIS IS EFFECTING EVERYONE ON THIS PLANET RIGHT NOW~ FYI~
VENUS-DIRECTED CME: A coronal mass ejection (CME, movie) that swept past Mercury on Nov. 13th will likely hit Venus later today. Because Venus has no global magnetic field to protect it, the impact could erode material directly from the top of the planet's atmosphere. It's okay; Venus has atmosphere to spare. Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab calculated the path of the CME, which left the sun on Nov. 12th.
REMARKABLE SOLAR ACTIVITY: In terms of solar flares, the sun is quiet today. Nevertheless, some impressive activity is underway on the sun. For one thing, an enormous wall of plasma is towering over the sun's southeastern horizon. Stephen Ramsden of Atlanta, Georgia, took this picture on Nov. 11th:
"Solar forums all over the world are buzzing with Sun-stronomers proclaiming this to be the biggest prominence that many of them had ever witnessed," he says.
Remarkably, though, this is not the biggest thing. A dark filament of magnetism is winding halfway around the entire sun. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory took this picture during the early hours of Nov. 14th:
From end to end, this twisted fiber of magnetism stretches more than a million km or about three times the distance between Earth and the Moon. If the filament becomes unstable, as solar filaments are prone to do, it could collapse and hit the stellar surface below, triggering a Hyder flare. No one can say if the eruption of such a sprawling structure would be Earth directed. Solar flare alerts: text, phone
"I cant help but wonder what could possibly come next since we are still over a year away from the forecasted Solar Maximum," adds Ramsden. "There's never been a better time to own a solar telescope than now!"
SOLAR UPDATE: The wall of plasma on the sun's SE limb has shifted to a state of high activity. "The prominence is evolving very fast now!" reports Sylvain Weiller of Saint Rémy lès Chevreuse, France. This morning it looked like [the dinosaur] Diplodocus."
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Solar wind
speed: 373.5 km/sec
density: 1.6 protons/cm3
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 1602 UT
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X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: C4 1636 UT Nov14
24-hr: C5 0930 UT Nov14
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 1800 UT
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Daily Sun: 14 Nov 11
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All of the sunspots on the Earthside of the sun are quiet and pose little threat for geoeffective flares. Credit: SDO/HMI
