greybeard
Well-known member
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/north ... -1.2763354
http://www.capitalwired.com/geomagnetic ... ted/22085/
http://www.capitalwired.com/geomagnetic ... ted/22085/
The more recent of the two solar blasts was a powerful X1.6-class flare that erupted on Sept. 10 at 17:46 UT (1:45 p.m. ET), reported the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center.
The initial UV radiation from the explosion disturbed high-frequency radio communications for more than an hour on the side of the Earth facing the sun, reported spaceweather.com, a space weather news site maintained by Tony Phillips, who also writes NASA's Science News.
The CME itself was expected to arrive late Friday, and was expected to give rise to a strong geomagnetic storm Saturday that could disrupt power systems, GPS and high-frequency radio communication, the Space Weather Prediction Center reported shortly before 1 a.m. ET Thursday.
It added that auroras may be seen as far south as Pennsylvania, Iowa and Oregon as a result of the storm.
An earlier CME erupted from an M-class flare, the second-most-powerful kind, Tuesday at 00:30 UTC (8:45 p.m. ET Sept. 8). It was expected to graze the Earth, causing a minor solar storm starting Friday.
Both solar flares erupted from a sunspot called AR2158. Sunspots are darker, cooler areas of the sun where solar flares generally erupt.