Spaceweather.com reports:
A strong-to-severe geomagnetic storm is in progress following the impact of a coronal mass ejection (CME) at approximately 12:15 UT on Sept. 26th.
The Goddard Space Weather Lab reports a “strong compression of Earth’s magnetosphere. Simulations indicate that solar wind plasma [has penetrated] close to geosynchronous orbit starting at 13:00UT.” Geosynchronous satellites could therefore be directly exposed to solar wind plasma and magnetic fields. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for Northern and Southern Lights after nightfall.
Having already unleashed two X-flares since Sept. 22nd, sunspot AR1302 appears ready for more. The active region has a complex “beta-gamma-delta” magnetic field that harbors energy for strong M- and X-classeruptions. Flares from AR1302 will become increasingly geoeffective as the sunspot turns toward Earth in the days ahead.
On Sunday, Sept. 25th, Dutch astrophotographer Emil Kraaikamp took a magnificent picture of the active region, which is so big only half of it fits on the screen. Click to view the entire sunspot:
The WUWT Solar reference page has more data and imagery.
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jack morrow says:
September 26, 2011 at 5:28 pm
I tried getting a photo with my new camera – 24X optical zoom to 600 mm 35mm equivalent or something like that. Some Moon photos turned out fairly well. I used the solar filter from my telescope. I managed to get some photos, but the extra reflections and whatnot certainly didn’t help.
Then I set up the telescope. I haven’t used it in a while, a pity. With the short eyepiece and Barlow lens in, every dust speck on the lens and floater in my eye were remarkably distracting. So I’m remarking. “It is an ancient programmer, and he stoppeth one of three.” (I do need to finish that poem someday.) Boy, a lot more floaters than I expected, because I’m not seeing them in real life.
Oh – the main sunspot was impressive too!
Hmm, this must be why I was picking up the OSU radio station in Corvallis all the way up were I am in Portland OR. Pretty cool, what ever they were playing was awesome. The kids might all be a bunch of Marxist brainwashed moonbats, but they know good music 🙂
I think these graphs present a better perspective, showing how SC24 resembles another small cycle, SC14 (1902-1913). Also shows how noisy the unsmoothed data can be.
http://www.leif.org/research/SC14-and-24.png
Uranus is bowling, Mercury’s in the slips and Earth’s in bat waving the moon around. HOWZAT! must be LBW. Nope, a couple more dots in the score book 🙂
Might be mid-latitude auroral skip, which can reflect VHF (30Mhz-300Mhz) signals.
The HF bands (3Mhz-30Mhz) were whacked due to the storm, which is showing signs of easing up.
Current solar conditions have suddenly turned quite. X-ray flux now down to B-level.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/plots/xray/20110927_xray.gif
John, don’t know the veracity of (or validity of the inferences derived from) your information (whether by actual observation or inference from various indices) about the HF spectrum, but, 7 MHz (40 Meters) has been ‘recovered’ for several hours now in N. America.
WWV on 10 and 15 MHZ were noted to be weak during the early hour of the storm about mid-day though, with 15 MHz WWV being observed stronger than 10 MHz at about the 1:00 PM EDT point …
Futher up-thread an individual noted no activity re: auroral skip on 6 or 2 Meters (see Doug Allen at September 26, 2011 at 4:26 pm) for instance. The other posters anomalous propagation might have been a product of tropospheric ducting (if on the FM broadcast band). Of late, past dusk, conditions have been VERY good on 80 Meters … suggesting the D-layer is receding a little earlier as we are headed into fall and enhancing AM broadcast band propagation conditions (the poster was not specific as to which broadcast band).
A quick check (10:18 PM EDT) of WWV 10 MHz shows 20 dB over S9 SSI meter reading on a reasonably accurate-reading Icom IC-756PROII receiver signal strength meter connected to an outside wire dipole antenna.
One must go with field observations by qualified observers, of course, over hypothesis or a ‘light reading of the tea leaves’ any day …
.
Hey Doug in Seattle!
We were in Puyallup this afternoon and heard a deep rumble too. Thought maybe it was a C-17 but then it was too sustained for a bit too long and then it died off too abruptly too, it seemed. Heard it two or three times around 3pm.
Daniel Vogler says:
September 26, 2011 at 4:16 pm
The prediction shows we should be around the 65-70 range but as of right now its 108.
The NOAA sunspot number you refer to must be multiplied by 0.6 to get the ‘official’ number.
I just saw this post on the EPA – it’s really nuts !!!
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/09/26/new-epa-regulations-would-require-230000-new-bureaucrats-to-administer/
Am I missing something? Comet Elenin appears to have done a Shoemaker-Levy 9 (from what I gather) and now we have a CME? I know correlation does not equal causation, but isn’t it curious that, yet again, the comet-CME coincidence appeared?
A temporary increase in the local solar wind would seem to be a great time to see if this results in lesser cloudyness due to a corresponding decrease in cosmic rays. Think of this as an opportunity.
J & Doug;
Heard it here in Vancouver, BC, too. Thought it was prolonged thunder at a distance at first, but concluded that was exceedingly unlikely, as we get very few electric storms here.
This solen page is even better, IMO:
http://www.solen.info/solar/solcycle.html
“Cycle 24 is expected to peak sometime in 2013. The current prediction is for a smoothed sunspot number maximum somewhere in the range 50-70.”
http://www.solen.info/solar/cycl23_24.gif
I can see a glow from the northern lights from my place at 2200 ft altitude in the Ozarks in northern Arkansas. Clear as a bell and a pretty cool night, CO2 didn’t trap any of the warming today from the whomperjawwed sun that’s mysteriously blank on the SH.
mkurbo says: September 26, 2011 at 8:41 pm “I just saw this post on the EPA –it’s really nuts !!!”
During the Repub debate in Orlando, FL I got a kick out of how quickly Herman Cain replied to the question of which government agency he would eliminate. “The EPA” he says, “they’re nuts” or something to that effect. He walked away handsomely with the FL straw pole. I wonder how many folks wish he was the POTUS instead, I know I do. I like his focus on the important stuff. Instead of lavi$h partie$ with the likes of Earth, Wind & Fire almost every evening and crooked political schemes.
_Jim
September 26, 2011 at 7:22 pm
###
96.3 🙂 I should have thought to mention this.
The present state of this layman’s understanding of solar cycles is that large sunspots close to the equator indicate the approaching end of the cycle. A bit early isn’t it? Also curious at the lack of sunspots in the southern hemisphere. Hope one of the gurus on this site will offer words of wisdom and comfort. 🙂
J, I heard it about 2:30 PM in Bellevue. Thought at first it was the sound of something on I-90, or maybe a jet from SeaTac with odd cloud conditions focusing the sound, but it died out and I-90 sounded its normal higher pitched sound. Then I was thinking it just the spot I was in. About 5 minutes later though it came back and lasted for about 2 minutes then was gone again, but I was in a different place.
I heard once about someone up in Alaska attributing a similar sound to HAARP, but dismissed it (too many conspiracies there and my skeptical nature – you know). Perhaps they were actually hearing an aurora in the daytime.
I saw the aurora when I worked in the far north, but didn’t hear anything then. But who knows, perhaps it’s possible for one to make a sound.
Anyway, it makes for an interesting mystery.
Interesting that 3 of us heard this sound in the PNW. Did anyone elsewhere hear the deep base rumbling at about 2:40 to 3:00 PM PDT (where PDT=UTC 0800).
Doug in Seattle says:
September 26, 2011 at 11:34 pm
Perhaps they were actually hearing an aurora in the daytime.
I saw the aurora when I worked in the far north, but didn’t hear anything then. But who knows, perhaps it’s possible for one to make a sound.
======================================================
From what i googled, the only sound that you could possibly hear from auroras are crackling or a hissing type sound. http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q1852.html
Wow, and that big spot is larger than the Earth.
Jack Morrow, never look at the sun unless through smoked glass didn’t your parents tell you.
LOL
“The present state of this layman’s understanding of solar cycles is that large sunspots close to the equator indicate the approaching end of the cycle. A bit early isn’t it? Also curious at the lack of sunspots in the southern hemisphere. Hope one of the gurus on this site will offer words of wisdom and comfort. :-)”
I don’t think that sunspots approaching the equator indicate the end of the cycle, rather maximum of the cycle. Actually, maximum can happen a year or so after sunspots have approached the equator. Maximums are kinda fuzzy, minimums not so much.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/bfly.gif
http://www.leif.org/research/SC14-and-24.png
So, IMO the maximum is to be expected ~2013-2015. If the SC 24 is longer than average, which I expect, the end of the SC 24 (start of SC 25) will be not before 2020.
I am also interested in NH/SH difference. It seems to oscillate.
Thanks Yote; I should have mentioned, if the enhanced propagation were Auroral in nature, there would have been a noticeable hiss or noise-like signal modulating the signal you received, per wiki: “Random motions of electrons spiraling around the field lines create a Doppler-spread that broadens the spectra of the emission to more or less noise-like ..”
Example of CW traffic experiencing auroral modulation can be found here:
http://www.dxzone.com/cgi-bin/dir/jump2.cgi?ID=8861
Example of Voice traffic experiencing auroral modulation can be found here:
http://www.vhfdx.info/propsounds.html
Note: The voice becomes almost completely obscured due to Doppler-induced phase distortion!
.
I also did a google search but included “rumble” as a key word. It found several links to descriptions that conform to my experience.
Nice solar max we got going on.
Can’t wait till we reach min soon.