Sunspot AR1476 may have some surprises for us in the coming days, and I hope it isn’t a Carrington type event. It has already launched two CME’s yesterday.
From NASA’s Spaceweather.com: A pair of solar eruptions on May 7th hurled coronal masss ejections (CMEs) toward Earth. Forecast tracks prepared by analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab suggests that clouds with arrive in succession on May 9th at 13:40 UT and May 10th at 07:54 UT (+/- 7 hours). The double impact could spark moderate geomagnetic storms. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.
With a least four dark cores larger than Earth, AR1476 sprawls more than 100,000 km from end to end, and makes an easy target for backyard solar telescopes. Amateur astronomer Alan Friedman sends this picture of the behemoth from his backyard in Buffalo, NY:
“AR1476 is firecrackler,” says Friedman.
Indeed, the active region is crackling with impulsive M-class solar flares. Based on the sunspot’s complex ‘beta-gamma’ magnetic field, NOAA forecasters estimate a 75% chance of more M-flares during the next 24 hours. There is also a 10% chance of powerful X-flares.
“This one is going to be fun as it turns to face us!” predicts Friedman. He might be right.
Here’s the current SDO image:
And a close up of AR1476:
Keep up with the latest at the WUWT Solar Reference Page
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
On solarham.com, the farside view indicates a series of previously numbered sunspots are coming around again. They’ll be renumbered, but they might be on their way out. Seems SN is on its way back down, and SFI will follow back down. That doesn’t mean 1476 won’t be very interesting. It’s just tiring how the media test run more scary stories.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/tag/carrington-event/
However, if we can’t get some backup transformers for power plant generators, we’ll be in a very tough spot if a serious flare destroys them.
http://bigpictureone.wordpress.com/tag/carrington-event/
There is a serious threat we should deal with, but it has more to do with famine and disease than burning alive as in that ridiculous movie “Knowing”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowing_(film)
Nah. Basic rule with astronomical events like comets or sunspots: The dramatic events will be a complete surprise. The announced and pre-panicked events will be fizzles.
Can anyone tell me how a Carrington event would impact HVDC interties? It seems to me that they do not have the vulnerabilities that HVAC interties have. Should we be building all new interties as HVDC?
Need to get the SCT daytime polar aligned to get some shots of this plus the practice will be beneficial for the May 21 annular solar eclipse and the June 5 Venus transit. Would need to be very lucky to catch a CME event at the same time but you never know.
There will be a ANNULAR SOLAR ECLIPSE on the 20-21st of May this month and a partial eclipse visible to much of the US, Canada, Russia and China.
It should be Spectacular to see, but even more so if the sun becomes active with large flares around this date IMO.
See here for a list of places that it will be visible to; http://astro.ukho.gov.uk/eclipse/0132012/
“An annular eclipse occurs when the Sun and Moon are exactly in line, but the apparent size of the Moon is smaller than that of the Sun. Hence the Sun appears as a very bright ring, or annulus, surrounding the outline of the Moon”. ~wikipedia
Kinda looks like the Hawaiian Islands. Is this a common occurrence?
Yeah, I noticed that large sunspot group just appearing on the limb couple days ago. Looked like a biggie.
Sun magnetic activity may be relatively low, but nothing like a Maunder Min, when sunspots virtually disappeared for decades.
I keep hearing about the devastation to be caused by a Carrington event, especially to the big grid transformers. Large CME’s are observed in advance by satellites and only travel at a maximum speed of 3200 km/s which would give us many hours of warning. I would think the grid operators would have plans to unplug the transformers for such an event. Am I missing something?
Donald Mitchell says:
May 8, 2012 at 12:44 pm
Can anyone tell me how a Carrington event would impact HVDC interties? It seems to me that they do not have the vulnerabilities that HVAC interties have. Should we be building all new interties as HVDC?
I am unfamiliar with the term “interties”. Is that some sort of transformer? Or is that British for inverter?
Nevertheless, it is possible to rebuild (rewind) a transformer in short order. Any shop that can handle large industrial motors should be able to deal with it on an emergency basis. Systems with properly co-ordinated circuit breakers should experience minimal damage.
Transmission of electricity via DC is not terribly efficient until you get in the 500kv + range. So there is not a lot of them (transmission lines) around. If you had to replace/rewind every distribution transformer in the United States for example it would take at least 2 years. There will not be anywhere near that level of damage even with a direct hit.
RobR says:
May 8, 2012 at 2:20 pm
I keep hearing about the devastation to be caused by a Carrington event, especially to the big grid transformers. Large CME’s are observed in advance by satellites and only travel at a maximum speed of 3200 km/s which would give us many hours of warning. I would think the grid operators would have plans to unplug the transformers for such an event. Am I missing something?
You are making the assumption that at working level where they have been told to ‘maintain supply, that they will actually start disconnecting their main transformers when there seem to be no problems and the game is just starting. I would think that the layers of bureaucracy in the power companies would lead to a level of inertia that means approval hedged around with caveats, would arrive around a day after the CME.
I would envisage that some of these systems are not designed to be disconnected and isolated with ease. Perhaps someone should ask the power companies how fast they could disconnect and isolate their systems given a few hours warning.
Rob – the grid is a delicately balanced generation vs load system. Taking transformers out of service requires a arbitrary load reduction (aka blackout). All anyone can do is preposition transformers at key positions and have crews on standby. Always remember, with electrical grids – power delivered must always equal power demand… If it doesn’t the grid collapses. Transformers are the gateway into and out of the system. GK
These fire crackers may be doing more than we know or suspect.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/TMC.htm
note correlation, spectral power distribution and then very odd percentage disparity between the incoming TSI and what is happening some 3000km below the Earth’s surface. Our planet has many amazing secrets.
“but soft, what light through yonder window breaks
it is the east and AR 1476 is the sun’
with apologies to the bard
It has the comma-shape. Likely the residents of the Sun are under a solar tornado-watch.
Meanwhile, here in New Hampshire, it’s cold and the clouds don’t seem to want to burn off. I plod across my muddy garden, stroke the white bristles on my chin, gaze sagely at the sky, and mutter, “It’s them durn cosmic rays.”
Hopefully a big sunspot will shoo away the cosmic rays for a bit, and the clouds will dry up. Sunshine is scarce. When it comes, it comes with north winds and frost. (After a hot spell in March had folk hopeful, and talking about a long and warm summer, moods have turned towards grumpiness, and those who planted early have paid the price.)
A garden is a better indicator of what is happening than weather records. The temperatures up in Concord, New Hampshire are messed up by hot spells in both March and April which make both months appear warm. A three day hot spell, with temperatures 20 degrees above normal, can make a whole month look warm, in the averages, but it takes only a single calm night, less than ten degrees below normal, to make a frost that can kill even cabbages, when they are tender seedlings.
There is a funny thing that happens to northern plants when they are exposed to cold. Perhaps a biologist can explain it. You see it in hardy plants that refuse to wither when exposed to frost, such as checkerberries, certain ground-hugging brambles, certain tough grasses, the early shoots of plants such as goldenrod, and the first shoots of swamp maple. When it is very cold they give up on green chlorophyll, and make some sort of purple stuff. We’ve been hit by enough hard frosts, after early growth, to have a lot of plants using the tactic, whatever it is, that turns them purple. I’ve even seen some ordinary grass with a purple tint, in early May.
In other words, there is some very real cold in this air this spring. It doesn’t show up in the averages, which make both March and April look above normal up here. However the plants know about it.
Therefore I’m rooting for more sunspots, and fewer cosmic rays. Let the clouds burn off, and the sun shine down.
I cannot share it, but you can skim through some or get your wallet out 🙂
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12507#description
Check that. It is free to read online.
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12507#description
How frustrating. Last time this group was chucking stuff our way, I checked the Aurora site and saw the Aurora Australis would have been readily visible from Auckland—like, right overhead!
The weather had other ideas with dense horizon-to-horizon cloud and heavy rain.
This time—it’s an exact repeat of last time. Weeks of cloudless skies day and night, and now horizon-to-horizon dense cloud … with heavy rain.
*Expletive deleted*
About the “World Climate Widget”. It seems stuck at 25/93 (and 0.11°, 392 and March 2012). I’m tempted to see if I can create my own. WUWT?
Sparks says:
May 8, 2012 at 1:11 pm
I saw an annular eclipse (no need to shout) once (Plymouth NH, 1995 or so). It wasn’t spectacular. The quality of the light after the Sun was 9% covered or so was very odd, and very hard to describe. Shadows were sharper, but weird too. Looking at the Sun was painful, thanks to dilated pupils. The most interesting thing to me was the start of annularity through my telescope. When I was a kid I liked to watch the movement of the minute hand on a large clock my grandparents had. With care, I could see the movement of the hour hand. The start of annularity was the first time I saw movement of a 29 day clock “element.”
Don’t expect to see solar flares. I doesn’t take much light from the Sun’s “surface” to outshine ejected plasma into invisibility.
I haven’t seen a total solar eclipse. I really should fix that someday. They’re a completely different event.
Oh – my brother and found that one of the best places to watch a partial solar eclipse from is in a maple tree. The deep notches in the leaves make thousands of pinhole cameras projecting images of the Sun in varying brightness and size on the leaves below.
Yes; Oh noes! We’re going to go ‘dark’ and there is not ‘thing one’ we can do about it!
/sarc
(As if we have not learned something from past events, and we have … the public, however, it seems has this ‘static’ view of the situation no matter how much one lone, sole, poster
attempts to add some sanity to the mix.)
.
Hoser says:
“However, if we can’t get some backup transformers for power plant generators, we’ll be in a very tough spot if a serious flare destroys them.”
Once again, the doom and gloom surrounding a Carrington-like Event is peddled. The statement above is wildly exaggerated and has been discussed at WUWT recently via U.S. DHS concerns about the same – http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/14/homeland-security-takes-on-the-carrington-event/ .
“There is a serious threat we should deal with, but it has more to do with famine and disease than burning alive as in that ridiculous movie ‘Knowing’.”
The movie was never marketed as non-fiction and was (I thought anyway) a sci-fi thriller intended purely for entertainment. But… how would a Carrington-like Event lead to “famine and disease” when its namesake did not?
I find that as soon as a spot like this appears and is publicised widely, then that ussually puts the kiss of death on it and little happens mostly!
Oh my God, run and hide in the storm cellar! You remember the last time a solar storm sucked up Dorothy and sent her to Oz, don’cha?
I said it before, and I’ll say it again. Solar storms are just another tool the alarmists use to scare people so government can loot more of our money.
G. Karst says:
May 8, 2012 at 2:47 pm
But come on, you would have hours to spin down the turbines and unhook the system. Yeah, you may have to black out the system for hours or even a day but this whole end of the grid thing. I have to believe, there are sane people in charge with contingency plans. I just can’t buy the catastrophe thing.
Ian W says:
May 8, 2012 at 2:44 pm
I would envisage that some of these systems are not designed to be disconnected and isolated with ease.
“envisage” what you want, but these folks are in to make a profit and losing there customers for a long period of time is as they say counter productive.