A Solar Tsunami
Posted by JAC on 12/23/2009, 7:40 am
Yesterday, Dec. 22nd at approximately 0455 UT, magnetic fields around sunspot 1036 erupted, roducing a C7-class solar flare.

NASA's STEREO-A spacecraft was almost directly above the sunspot at the time of the blast and recorded this extreme ultraviolet movie:







The shadowy wave racing away from the blast site is a "solar tsunami"--a swell of hot, magnetized plasma about 100,000 km high packing as much energy as a million megatons of TNT.

The tsunami petered out before it went more than halfway around the sun, but another manifestation of the blast is still going.

The eruption hurled a faint coronal mass ejection (CME) into space and the billion-ton cloud should cross Earth's orbit on or about Dec. 25th.

A glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field could spark polar auroras for Christmas.


http://www.spaceweather.com/glossary/flareclasses.html?PHPSESSID=rii12hol7q1qkdh4dr8cs96987


http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/24nov_solartsunami.htm


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Solar Activity - JAC, 12/22/2009, 6:52 am
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