Super Solar Flare

[Dover]

Super Solar Flare
05.06.2008
...................................

May 6, 2008: At 11:18 AM on the cloudless morning of Thursday, September 1, 1859, 33-year-old Richard Carrington—widely acknowledged to be one of England's foremost solar astronomers—was in his well-appointed private observatory. Just as usual on every sunny day, his telescope was projecting an 11-inch-wide image of the sun on a screen, and Carrington skillfully drew the sunspots he saw.


On that morning, he was capturing the likeness of an enormous group of sunspots. Suddenly, before his eyes, two brilliant beads of blinding white light appeared over the sunspots, intensified rapidly, and became kidney-shaped. Realizing that he was witnessing something unprecedented and "being somewhat flurried by the surprise," Carrington later wrote, "I hastily ran to call someone to witness the exhibition with me. On returning within 60 seconds, I was mortified to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled." He and his witness watched the white spots contract to mere pinpoints and disappear.

It was 11:23 AM. Only five minutes had passed.

Just before dawn the next day, skies all over planet Earth erupted in red, green, and purple auroras so brilliant that newspapers could be read as easily as in daylight. Indeed, stunning auroras pulsated even at near tropical latitudes over Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Hawaii.

Even more disconcerting, telegraph systems worldwide went haywire. Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set the telegraph paper on fire. Even when telegraphers disconnected the batteries powering the lines, aurora-induced electric currents in the wires still allowed messages to be transmitted....>

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/06may_carringtonflare.htm?list164000

[TexasLady]

1. WOW!

I watch this stuff, thanks for the post!

[cliss]

2. Thanks Dover for the update.

Solar Flares are a little-understood phenomenon. They have a HUGE impact on planet earth. When you have big flares like the one above, watch for all kinds of things to happen.

[wain]

3. Thanks Dover, this is one of the gems found browsing DU

refreshing. Very much appreciated.

[Celebration]

4. Thanks

I feel as if I shouldn't directly look at that picture. LOL.

Good grief. There is still a telegraph system? (shake my head in amazement). The things I learn!

[krispos42]

5. No, it happened back in 1859

But that threw me for a couple of minutes, too! I thought "Bull-shit! We don't use telegraph lines anymore!"

:-)

[Posteritatis]

6. Actually, I think the last telegraphs in the US shut down only within the last year or so (nt)

[Indenturedebtor]

7. OH NO

What are we going to do when we finally figure out how to defeat the aliens? Without our satellite network we'll be utterly defenseless :P

[Catshrink]

8. Wow!

That is so incredible. Thanks for posting.

[phantom power]

9. A flare like that today would do very bad things to our electronic civilization.

Bad, bad, bad.

[Catshrink]

10. I thought solar flares were responsible for the Aurora Borealis

Anyone know the real deal on that?

[rayofreason]

15. I know the real deal.

Flares do not create the aurora.

Currents flowing in the magnetosphere (powered by the solar wind) create the aurora. Some of the current flows parallel to the magnetic field. If those parallel currents are strong enough they create electric fields parallel to the magnetic field that accelerate electrons, which in turn collide with neutral atoms in the ionosphere, exciting those atoms. The excited atoms then emit photons that we see as the aurora.

This article is not too bad -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(astronomy)

The old picture you see in books of energetic particles coming from the sun to create aurorae is a 1960's view that is very obsolete.

[Pisces]

11. Dec. 21, 2012 could be the climax of the largest solar flare ever known. This is the end date

of the Mayan Calendar that has been dead on for over 5k years. This is also the date of the galactic alignment. It is an interesting date with many theories. We are in a new solar cycle which is the most intense.

[TechBear_Seattle]

12. "Galactic alignment"?

With what is our galaxy aligning?

Added: Nevermind, I found this: http://alignment2012.com/whatisGA.htm

Anyone who makes a claim such as "Fact: the sun is one-half a degree wide" is abjectly ignorant of junior high school mathematics, much less astronomy. There is no point in reading any further than that.

[Indenturedebtor]

13. Astrology was great before the invention of science

Now... not so much :shrug:

[rayofreason]

16. BS

So much BS it is hard to know where to start.

But to pick one item at random - "Mayan Calendar that has been dead on for over 5k years."

ROFLMAO

While the base year from the Mayan calendar is 3114 BC, the earliest "long count" date known is 37 AD from El Baul

See these sites with good information to help drop the new age crappy misinterpretation of Mayan calendrics/mythology

http://www.authenticmaya.com/calendar.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_Long_Count_calendar
http://weber.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/arch/mexchron.html

[pleah]

14. Beautiful and scary.