~Space Weather Update~ The Blast From Yesterday Largest In Years~ [1]

SPECTACULAR EXPLOSION (UPDATED): Magnetic fields on the sun's northeastern limb erupted around 17:45 UT on April 16th, producing one of the most visually-spectacular explosions in years. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) recorded the blast at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths:

 

[2].

The explosion, which registered M1.7 on the Richter Scale of solar flares [3], was not Earth-directed, but it did hurl a CME into space. Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab have analyzed the trajectory [4] of the cloud and found that it will hit NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft, the Spitzer space telescope, and the rover Curiosity [5] en route to Mars. Planets Venus and Mars could also receive a glancing blow.

 

Using data from SDO, Steele Hill of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center assembled a must-see movie [6] of the event. It shows the explosion unfolding at 304Å, a wavelength which traces plasma with a temperature around 80,000 K.

 

Coverage of the blast was not limited to space telescopes. Amateur astronomers saw it, too. Jim Lafferty sends this picture from his backyard observatory in Redlands, California:

 

[7]

 

"Yesterday's prominence on the sun's eastern limb was was one of the largest in years---short lived, it was mostly gone in a few hours," says Lafferty. "It was a wonderful sight in the eyepiece and in the camera!"

 

more images: from Vahan Yeterian [8] of Lompoc California; from John Minnerath [9] of Crowheart, Wyoming; from John Stetson [10] of Falmouth, Maine; from Thomas Ashcraft [11] of New Mexico;

 

Switch to: Europe, USA, New Zealand, Antarctica
Credit: NOAA/POES

Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 2 quiet
24-hr max: Kp= 2 quiet
explanation [21] | more data [22]

Interplanetary Mag. Field
B_total: 8.4 nT
B_z: 7 nT south
explanation [23] | more data [24]
Updated: Today at 1636 UT

Coronal Holes: 17 Apr 12

[25]

There are no large coronal holes on tthe Earthside of the sun. Credit: SDO/AIA.