Solar flares and coronal mass ejections.

[Michael]

Aurora Forecast | Geophysical Institute

 

[razeontherock]

Nothing for here in WI, but there's a great pic at the bottom of the page!

 

[Michael]

http://www3.nict.go.jp/y/y223/simulation/realtime/movie/2011/test_6.20110909.avi

The movie version of the particle shock wave hitting the electromagnetic field (magnetosphere) of the Earth is now online. It's a good thing that the Earth has natural "shields".

 

[Michael]

Today's Space Weather
FYI, this is a nice set of graphs that shows the solar wind impact. The red areas of the bottom two bar charts show the impact of the solar wind shock wave as it hits the Earth (and GEOS).

 

[Michael]

http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_1024_0211.mpg If you look closely at about the 1:00 position, 1/2 way toward the limb (from the center), you'll notice that the sun experienced a rather large dark filament eruption at about 1:28 today. That dark filament eruption will definitely result in a CME, but fortunately it's aimed up and away from the planetary plane.

 

[Michael]

http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2011/09/10/ahead_20110910_cor2_512.mpg

Most of the filament seems to be directed up and away from the planets, but that was a fairly significant CME.

 

[Michael]

http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2011/09/10/ahead_20110910_cor2_512.mpg

FYI, that STEREO image in the previous post shows two CME's. The first one is caused to a "dark filament eruption", whereas the second coronal mass ejections is caused by a circuit disruption of a very active (white hot) filament in the active region 11283.

In the SDO image below you can observe the dark filament lift off at about 2:30 on the 10th and a cascade forms in the atmosphere about 4:30-5:00 from the explosion of the thread. Right after that occurs, (and actually right before), the active region going over the horizon experience another circuit disruption of a bright thread, followed by a growing "cascade" of loops that rise up from the surface. This is a cool video IMO because is demonstrates both types of flares (circuit disruption and dark filament eruption) and you can see the resulting CME of both of them in the STEREO images.

http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_1024_0211.mpg

 

[Michael]

http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_1024_0211.mp4

http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/plots/xray/20140822_xray.gif

The sun has an active region that is pointed in our general direction at the moment and it's pretty active in terms of ejecting plasma at the moment. I've seen about 4 good circuit disruption "pops" from it today already, and I suspect we'll see the aurora from those events in a couple of days. None of the events thus far look to be huge, but cumulatively they should put on a pretty good light show in a few days.

 

[Glenn vc]

http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_1024_0304.mpg

Today's "dark filament" eruption in the northern hemisphere got me thinking more about solar flares and the different types of coronal mass ejections. There seem to be two prevalent ways for a CME to occur, from "circuit disruption" events in very "high energy" coronal loops, and "dark filament" eruptions that tend to produce very significant CME's if not particularly large spikes in the x-ray spectrum.

The first type of flare is what Alfven would have described as a "circuit disruption" type of flare that "pinches" the coronal loop plasma to the point of failure at some point along the loop. The resulting circuit disruption process releases the total circuit energy into the mass ejection process. These types of flares produce LARGE spikes in the x-ray spectrum, and tend to produce very high velocity particles that can reach earth in as little as 15-20 minutes. These types of flares can produce fairly significant sized mass ejections, but that isn't always the case.

[0908.0813] Generation of large scale electric fields in coronal flare circuits

The second type of solar flare is the type that can be seen today in the 304A wavelength. There are "dark filaments" in the solar atmosphere that can "erupt" outward. The darker materials can be seen against the lighter background in not only the 304A images, but also in many of the iron ion wavelengths, including 335A and 211A. These types of dark filament eruptions tend to produce very little in the way of x-ray output as the filament turns outward, but they do tend to produce fairly significant amounts of mass flows, or CME's. They tend to be the "most dangerous" type of solar flare IMO.

Unfortunately this type of flare/CME event is currently NOT being "predicted" by any statistical/scientific means that I am aware of at the moment, whereas the first type of flare is being 'predicted' by tracking sunspot patterns in the photosphere and grouping them into "categories".

Index of /ftpdir/forecasts/daypre
Flare Prediction System

Be forewarned that there is a timing problem, and therefore a data collection problem in the solarmonitor data as it relates to past predictions, but they accurately show the current NOAA predictions for the day.

I'm currently working on a similar "grouping" and categorization method for "dark filament" eruption events. There seems to be an association between the size of the dark filament and the likelihood of eruption. The more mass in the dark filament, the more likely it also will produce a "large" coronal mass ejection event. The proximity to "active regions" also seems to play a part in the "stability' factor of the dark filaments.

The two other factors in filament eruption processes seem to be related to the height of the filament in the atmosphere and the "speed" of the materials in the filament. There's a really good SDO closeup image of a "partial" dark filament eruption that I'll try to round up a bit later today and post to the thread. I will also try to round up some examples of the various 'categories' I'm using. I'd like to get some feedback to be sure my grouping methods seem logical and easily distinguished by someone other than myself.

It should take a few hours for the latest dark filament eruption CME to become observable in the LASCO C-2 and C-3 images, but I will post those images once the dark filament eruption that is observed in the 304A SDO images become visible in the LASCO images. I'll also post links to the STEREO images of the CME as well.