~11~16~11~ SPACE WEATHER UPDATE~
SOLAR BLAST: A magnetic prominence dancing along the sun's southeastern limb became unstable on Nov. 15th and slowly erupted. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the event, which unfolded over a period of thirteen hours:
The eruption hurled a cloud of plasma (CME) toward Venus. According to a forecast track created by analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab, the cloud should reach the second planet on Nov. 17th. Venus has no global magnetic field to protect it from CMEs. The impact will likely strip a small amount of atmosphere from the planet's cloudtops. Solar flare alerts: text, phone
more images: from Lyrics Some of Panyu, Guangzhou, China.; from Karzaman Ahmad of Langkawi National Observatory, Malaysia; from Chin Wei Loon of Solar Observatory, University of Malaya, Malaysia.
ASTEROID PARALLAX: "On November 9th, asteroid 2005 YU55 passed so close to Earth that viewers at separate locations saw the interloper appear in slightly different spots against the background star field," says amateur astronomer Mike Harms of San Francisco. To illustrate this parallax effect, he combined his own observations with those of Dennis di Cicco across the country in Boston:
At the time of the flyby, the 400m-wide space rock was only 324,600 kilometers away, about 85% the distance from Earth to the Moon. This allowed amateur and professional astronomers alike to study the asteroid in unprecedented detail.
In Australia, where the Boston vs. Brisbane parallax effect was even greater, Dennis Simmons video-recorded the flyby: "It was quite sobering to be able to view the almost full Moon some 20 degrees away, knowing that this lump of rock was now nearer to me than our Moon," he says. "I was astonished at how bright the NEO appeared, having read that results from the Arecibo radar indicated it to be a very dark, nearly spherical object some 400 meters in diameter."
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Solar wind
speed: 436.9 km/sec
density: 0.1 protons/cm3
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at 1505 UT
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X-ray Solar Flares
6-hr max: C7 1500 UT Nov16
24-hr: C7 0455 UT Nov16
explanation | more data
Updated: Today at: 1500 UT
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Daily Sun: 16 Nov 11
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Sunspot 1346 produced an M2-class flare @ 1243 UT on Nov. 15th. Credit: SDO/HMI
