Subscription Center
September 27, 2011
| 
2
Sunspot 1302. Credit: NASA/SDO/HMI
A “strong to severe” geomagnetic storm hit Earth yesterday, NASA says, after the sun unleashed a burst of plasma from a turbulent region two days prior.
The region, known as sunspot 1302, has sent forth a few blasts of energy called solar flares, including a flare and an accompanying belch of plasma called a coronal mass ejection (CME) on September 24. The CME reached Earth two days later and impacted the planet’s magnetic shielding, exposing high-altitude satellites to charged particles and magnetic fields, according to NASA. The CME’s arrival also produced low-latitude auroras—spaceweather.com reports that sightings of the not-so-northern lights were reported in Michigan, New York, South Dakota, Maine and Minnesota.
Aurora photo: Scott Lough via Flickr/Creative Commons License
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center, high-accuracy GPS services were affected by the storm.
An earlier flare from sunspot 1302 was more powerful but did not aim a blow at Earth—the X1.9-category flare captured on the video below by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory erupted about three hours before the M-class, or medium-size, flare accompanying the CME. X is the most powerful class of flare, and the numerical suffix indicates the relative brightness of the flare within that class. (An X9 is the brightest classification on the scale.)
Video credit: NASA/SDO/GOES
Rights & Permissions
2 Comments
Add a Comment
You must sign in or register as a ScientificAmerican.com member to submit a comment.
Click one of the buttons below to register using an existing Social Account.
Dissecting the controversy about early psychological response to disasters and trauma
What unconventional fuels tell us about the global energy system
Winning the War against Cervical Cancer
The SciArt Buzz: ScienceArt On Exhibit In May/June 2013
My Heart is in Oklahoma now #OklahomaStrong
An Unheralded Breakthrough: The Rosetta Stone of Mathematics
See what we're tweeting about
David_Bressan #prayforoklahoma is worthless exercise in self-indulgent delusion http://t.co/4yRYazxoza
notscientific Discover More: The Elements by Dan Green | Book Review by @GrrlScientist http://t.co/Ey3gRcPx7n #scilogs
BecCrew Why is Marco Pierre White acting like such a serial killer on Kitchen Wars?
YES! Send me a free issue of Scientific American with no obligation to continue the subscription. If I like it, I will be billed for the one-year subscription.
Share
Email
Print
The northern lights were seen last night as far south as Michigan, New York, South Dakota and Maine in the United States, and also from Europe and New Zealand. It was the strongest geomagnetic storm since October 2003.
Link to thisA HD video of what the northern lights look like during a strong geomagnetic storm as we had yesterday can be seen at http://www.vimeo.com/27315234
Our eyes have seen the glory.
Link to this