By Balasubramanyam Seshan: Subscribe to Balasubramanyam's RSS feed
August 10, 2010 2:54 PM EDT
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s solar dynamics observatory detected a solar flare on Saturday, which could result in auroras at high latitudes tonight.
NASA's solar dynamics observatory detected an M-class flare, hurling a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space. The CME is not fully directed toward Earth, but some of the plasma may be visible in the magnetosphere as an aurora between August 9 and August 10. The cloud may also cause geomagnetic disturbances.
NASA said M-class flares are medium-sized, and can cause brief radio blackouts that affect Earth’s polar regions. Minor radiation storms sometimes follow M-class flares.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said a minor radio blackout event occurred at 2 pm EDT on Monday when an M1 flare erupted on the Sun. Solar flares are classified as C (low intensity), M (moderate intensity), and X (high intensity).
The flare was associated with a CME which is heading towards Earth and is expected to arrive on August 10. Earth is expected to take only a glancing blow and no major geomagnetic storms are expected, according to NOAA.
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However, there was a weak or minor degradation of high frequency (HF) radio communication on sunlit side, occasional loss of radio contract, and low-frequency navigation signals degraded for brief intervals, NOAA said.
CME is a massive burst of solar wind, plasma and magnetic fields rising above the solar corona or being released into space. CMEs typically reach Earth one to five days after the eruption from the Sun.
Earlier on August 3, a moderate solar storm began at about 12:41 pm EDT, reaching the G2 level on the geomagnetic storm scale which measures storms on a scale from G1 (minor) to G5 (extreme), NOAA said.
It said no significant impacts have been reported, though aurora sightings were reported from Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Elevated activity is forecast to continue through Friday as additional solar storms impact the Earth.
NOAA space weather prediction center issued a 3-day solar-geophysical forecast on August 9 at 10:00 pm UTC, when solar activity is expected to be very low. However, it said there is a chance for a C-class flare from the sun.
Geomagnetic field activity is expected to be at unsettled-to-active levels on August 10 due to the expected arrival of the CME observed on Saturday, the space weather prediction center said.
The center expects quiet-to-unsettled levels on August 11 due to the expected arrival of a recurrent coronal hole high-speed stream. The center said 'quiet-levels' are expected on August 12.
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