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Weather, Natural Disasters, Space, Science & Tech
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The shock wave from Saturday’s X-class solar flare rushed past Earth at 9:50 PM Pacific time Monday, and contrary to my previous statement that it probably “won’t produce a big aurora storm,” a strong display of Northern lights is now underway! Check out this satellite map to see how far south the “auroral oval” is stretching — all across the upper Great Plains.
For the very latest auroral satellite images, click here. For a chart of the “Kp Index” (the higher the numbers, the more intense the storm), click here. For the latest news, visit SpaceWeather.com!
Well, it looks like yesterday big solar flare won’t produce a big aurora storm. The flare was on the Sun’s western limb, so the shock wave it produced is likely to deliver only a “glancing blow” to Earth, according to SpaceWeather.com. Whatever Northern lights we do get will probably happen Monday or Tuesday.
In the mean time, an S3-class radiation storm is in progress! One of the things such storms do is, they create “noise” in satellite images, which you can see in the animation above. (Another example.) See how it looks like there’s about a thousand comets moving in all directions? And notice how those “comets” mysteriously appeared at the same exact time the shock wave happened? Well, guess what? They’re not comets — they’re just noise, caused by the high levels of radiation. But don’t worry, there’s no danger to humans (although if you’re flying in an airplane at high latitudes, you might get the equivalent of about one chest x-ray worth of radiation).
In other news, it turns out the Northern lights over the weekend were visible from Southern California — but not with the naked eye. You had to have a camera set on long exposure and facing north. (Wouldn’t have worked for me anyway. The only “Northern lights” you can see from USC are the lights of downtown L.A., which is due north of us.) Here’s an image from San Diego:
Finally, a bit more space news: apparently Bush’s missile-defense system would jeopardize all space travel because of all the space debris it would produce. Thanks to Fark.com for the link!
Another solar flare! It happened at around 6:50 PM Pacific time. This one is a powerful X-class flare, and it is already causing an S2 (moderate) radiation storm on Earth! But it’s unclear whether another Coronal Mass Ejection (the things that produce Northern Lights) is headed toward Earth. If it is, it would get here in 2-3 days. Stay tuned to SpaceWeather.com for the very latest!
Wow! This one is from Wisconsin. More aurora images from last night: click here!
Above is the CNN map of the epicenter. Here is a map of the earthquake’s effects, based on people’s reports of how much shaking they felt. Here is a similar map showing what people felt in Canada. And here is a list of aftershocks.
Oh, and just in case you were wondering, I have experienced two earthquakes during my time in Southern California, one of which was literally about a hundred times stronger than your stupid Northeast earthquake. So nyah. :)
My first quake, the really big one, was the Hector Mine earthquake on October 16, 1999, less than two months into my freshman year at USC. That one woke me up at around 3:00 AM, whereupon I immediately jumped across the room, turned on my camcorder and yelled, “Earthquake! Earthquake!” (The camera missed the shaking, but I did get footage of the electricity flashing on and off. Of course, that could be any summer day in California…) That quake was 7.1 on the Richter scale — very big — but its epicenter was quite far away, way out in the desert, and it did very little damage.
My second earthquake occured on September 9, 2001. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was sitting in the basement of Doheny Library — which had only just reopened after being closed for two years while undergoing, of all things, an earthquake retrofit — when all of a sudden, the bookstacks started to shake, the overhead pipes and lights started swinging back and forth, and the ground very definitely shook. This quake was only a 4.2 (which, because the Richter scale is logarithmic, means it was almost 1,000 times weaker than the Hector Mine quake), but its epicenter was much closer to USC — in the Beverly Hills/West Hollywood area — so the shaking was almost as strong. For me personally, it was much scarier, since I was all alone in a basement surrounded by large metal objects. I haven’t set foot in the basement of Doheny Library since. :) (Although, tragically, the earthquake was by no means the scariest thing that would happen that week. About 36 hours later, the Sept. 11 attacks took place).
Local coverage from the Press-Republican newspaper of upstate New York, where the earthquake was centered.
More pictures of the Northern lights are coming in. Here’s one from Finland. Here’s some from North Dakota. For the very latest, visit SpaceWeather.com’s photo gallery.
In other news, click here for local coverage from the area where the tragic Amtrak crash took place on Thursday. And just in case you were wondering what Friday’s Miami Herald front page looked like, well, wonder no more:
