From NASA Mid-level Solar Flare Erupts from the Sun May 8, 2014
The bright light on the left side of the sun shows an M5.2-class solar flare in progress on May 8, 2014.This image, captured by NASA’s SDO, shows light with a 131 Angstrom wavelength, which highlights the extremely hot material in a solar flare and is typically colorized in teal. Image Credit: NASA/SDO› View full disk image
The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 6:07 a.m. EDT on May 8, 2014, and NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, captured images of it.
Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however — when intense enough — they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.
To see how this event may impact Earth, please visit NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center at http://spaceweather.gov, the U.S. government’s official source for space weather forecasts, alerts, watches and warnings.
This flare is classified as an M5.2-class flare. M class flares are on the order of a tenth as strong as the most intense flares, the X-class flares.
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From NOAA’s SWPC, metrics for April are in.
Sunspots are right about where the predictive line suggests.
Ditto for radio flux
And, the Ap magnetic index continues to bump along the bottom as it has done since the regime shift in October 2005, indicating a sluggish solar dynamo:
vuk says:
May 10, 2014 at 1:54 pm
but it was clear I was not quoting CME’s magnetic field strength,
What you said was: “Coronal mas ejection takes place, this carries much stronger magnetic field, up to 2% of the Earth;s field at poles” so it was clear that you were talking about that ‘this’ [the coronal mass ejection] carried ‘much stronger magnetic field’. And that you therefore was talking about the magnetic field carried by the CME. But, if you now realize that you were wrong that is, of course, good. To build on that new understanding perhaps you may also realize that the magnetic effect you are quoting pertains to a very localized region in the auroral zone [not at the magnetic pole]. The global effect [the so-called ring current] is an order of magnitude smaller. Your ‘consensus’ idea is nonsense. It is all about you possibly learning something.
Leif,
What’s up with Livingston & Penn’s sunspot intensity and magnetic field plots? It looks like they’ve leveled off and may be reversing.
http://www.leif.org/research/Livingston%20and%20Penn.png
Ric Werme says:
May 11, 2014 at 10:38 am
What’s up with Livingston & Penn’s sunspot intensity and magnetic field plots? It looks like they’ve leveled off and may be reversing.
That they level off is a natural consequence of the evolution [as you keep cutting off the bottom]. There may be a weak solar cycle variation as well. It is too early to say for sure. Need more data.
What do the solar cycle and the interstellar background have in common?
Both are inhomogeneous.
The IBEX ribbon as a signature of the inhomogeneity of the local interstellar medium
Horst Fichtner1, Klaus Scherer1, Frederic Effenberger1,2, Jochen Zönnchen3, Nathan Schwadron4 and David J. McComas5,6
03 January 2014
”’…Results. It is found that inhomogeneities in the local interstellar medium can explain not only the IBEX ribbon and outer heliospheric Lyman-α observations, but can also account for the interstellar Lyman-α absorption that could only with difficulty be fully attributed to the hydrogen wall in the outer heliosheath if the heliospheric bow shock would indeed be absent….”’
http://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/abs/2014/01/aa22064-13/aa22064-13.html
What else could be in common betwixt the sun and interstellar background? That asymmetry thingy going on. Where as there is a dent in the heliospheric boundary creating the first asymmetry, which we thinks correlates well with the downwind asymmetry in the heliospheric tail and those solar disk asymmetries going on inbetween..
And to all our teams working on the local interstellar background..
Might the spectrometry described here be useful…
Unique Astrophysics in the Lyman Ultraviolet
”’Summary: There is unique and groundbreaking science to be done with a new generation of UV
spectrographs that cover wavelengths in the “Lyman Ultraviolet” (LUV; 912 – 1216 Å)…
…The unique science available in the LUV includes critical problems in astrophysics
ranging from the habitability of exoplanets to the reionization of the IGM. Crucially, the local
Universe (z . 0.1) is entirely closed to many key physical diagnostics without access to the LUV.
These compelling scientific problems require overcoming these technical barriers so that future UV
spectrographs can extend coverage to the Lyman limit at 912 A…””
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1209/1209.3272.pdf
Carla what on earth are you talking about?
Sparks says:
May 11, 2014 at 7:02 pm
Carla what on earth are you talking about?
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What modulates the heliosphere for 1, is the same as what modulates the solar cycle for 2 and if what modulates the heliosphere is not homogeneous for 3. Then something more than the Interstellar wind direction has changed in the last 40 years for 4.
Didn’t require Milankovich or any Jovian planets.
Carla says:
May 12, 2014 at 5:26 pm
What modulates the heliosphere for 1, is the same as what modulates the solar cycle
Is nonsense. The solar cycle is what modulates the heliosphere. And what happens at the outer edge of the solar system has no influence on the Sun or the inner part.
lsvalgaard says:
May 12, 2014 at 6:28 pm
Carla says:
May 12, 2014 at 5:26 pm
What modulates the heliosphere for 1, is the same as what modulates the solar cycle
Is nonsense. The solar cycle is what modulates the heliosphere. And what happens at the outer edge of the solar system has no influence on the Sun or the inner part.
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Don’t force me to use the extreme event of a fast, cold, dense interstellar cloud pushing the solar termination shock up to 1 AU like in Earths orbit. Then I might have to ask you, what kind of solar cycle would we then have?
Or, what kind of solar cycle would we have while passing through an interstellar magnetic flux tube? Or, what kind of solar cycle would we have if we were in a warm ionionized but densely populated? As opposed to sparsely? Is it E field dominate or B field dominate.
Get a grip Dr. S., background not homogenous..solar accretion or filtration however you wish..clumps, clusters of clumpy clouds joining other clusters of clumpy clouds.. some quite small tiny scale atomic structures.
So, how’s the sunspot work shop going?
There is some evidence to indicate that there is a a cluster of clouds in the Apex cloud or G cloud group joining the CLIC (cluster of local interstellar clouds), which may indicate a nearby Loop I boundary.
Carla says:
May 12, 2014 at 7:42 pm
Don’t force me to use the extreme event of a fast, cold, dense interstellar cloud pushing the solar termination shock up to 1 AU like in Earths orbit. Then I might have to ask you, what kind of solar cycle would we then have?
Regardless of where the termination shock is, the sun and the solar cycle will not be affected in any way. And any interstellar clouds etc take thousands of years to pass so will hardly qualify as ‘events’.
lsvalgaard says:
May 12, 2014 at 11:08 pm
…the sun and the solar cycle will not be affected in any way.
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You know Dr. S., the first place a person might want to check, in the case of an increase or change in interstellar wind and density pressure, is solar rotation.
They say, warm low density the sun will orbit faster, as opposed to cool higher density, that whole less resistance and drag thing going on. Must be some points inbetween..fast and slow. The angle(s) at which the resistance and pressures occur probably often create heliospheric hemispheric differences or differential something or another..
Change the rotation and vary the solar cycle.
Don’t make me ask you, what the moon is made of, ok?
Carla says:
May 13, 2014 at 3:41 pm
They say, warm low density the sun will orbit faster
No, the solar wind is supersonic and the Sun therefore cannot know what happens at the outer boundary.
lsvalgaard says:
May 13, 2014 at 5:46 pm
Carla says:
May 13, 2014 at 3:41 pm
They say, warm low density the sun will orbit faster
No, the solar wind is supersonic and the Sun therefore cannot know what happens at the outer boundary.
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Well the heliosphere is a leaky ship Dr. S., and its current shape indicates it is squashed over its polar region, leaving a long trailing tail, coincidently the polar fields are running at 100 year low values. That outside resistance that has no effect is showing..Remember in the olden days when helisphere used to be more uniformly expanded outwards..and how it had maintained that for a century..Then the arrival of the spaceage high in GCR..and more expected next cycle. GCR above 500Mev? don’t care how supersonic the solar wind is, or is not..
Carla says:
May 13, 2014 at 7:12 pm
Well the heliosphere is a leaky ship Dr. S.,
None of that matters for the solar cycle.
Carla says:
May 13, 2014 at 7:12 pm
Well the heliosphere is a leaky ship Dr. S., and its current shape indicates it is squashed over its polar region, leaving a long trailing tail, coincidently the polar fields are running at 100 year low values.
None of this matters for the solar cycle. The shape and extent of the heliosphere and the puny GCRs don’t matter for the Sun and its activity.
Let’s just see now..
In the mid. 1990’s is when the solar polar fields began [their] decline.
Now in this solar 24 min. the solar polar fields hit the floor..the solar cycle got longer or slowed down.
If the solar rotation slows or speeds up, the cycle will vary.
So in the course of the sun’s orbit about the galaxy, there are times when it will increase in orbital as well as rotation speed, due primarily to the temp, density, wind speed and direction and GCR eV levels, of the interstellar medium it is embedded. And interstellar clouds come in all shapes and sizes, irregular.
In the case of the heliosphere there could be excess’s of pressure in one hemisphere and less in another.
Maybe we should be more careful in decoupling the the GCR from the pressure. We always seem to want to filter them.
Saw an article on an alternate theory of the interstellar gas background.
They suggested that we should be treating it as gas and not rigid clould structures.
Two waves of expanding gas propagating out wards and one may overtake the other creating a ripple
and which appears as a boundary in conventional rigid theory. Complimentary article I thought.
Carla says:
May 15, 2014 at 4:09 pm
So in the course of the sun’s orbit about the galaxy, there are times when it will increase in orbital as well as rotation speed,
No, the rotation is not affected by the Sun’s movements through the Galaxy.
Back to the extreme example..
How fast would Ol Sol rotate with its termination shock at 1AU? If the interstellar pressure can push the termination shock in and out and with hemispheric asymmetrys you say no effect on rotation?
Thanks Dr. S. but we need to start looking at the larger picture. Galaxy is bigger, Ol Sol is small, now who is puny?
Back to that solar winds lightning link topic.
Carla says:
May 15, 2014 at 6:07 pm
How fast would Ol Sol rotate with its termination shock at 1AU? If the interstellar pressure can push the termination shock in and out and with hemispheric asymmetrys you say no effect on rotation?
For the gazillionth time: the solar wind is supersonic and no effects can travel upstream. So no effect on rotation. Over billions of years the solar wind does carry angular momentum away from the Sun slowing down the rotation, but that is a different story.
No effects can travel upstream? Dr. S. Solar gravitational focusing cone does come to mind.
Ok that aside.
Check this out..
“””These three epochs of observations indicate a consistent progression of flow longitudes that suggest that the effective flow of the local interstellar medium into the heliosphere may be rotating, with an approximately six degree change over the past 40 years. “””
Gee full article listed as, NOT AVAILABLE, hmm go figure..
Variations in the Directions of the Local Interstellar Wind
Frisch, P. C.; Bzowski, M.; Livadiotis, G.; McComas, D. J.; Moebius, E.; Mueller, H.; Pryor, W. R.; Schwadron, N. A.; Ajello, J. M.; Vallerga, J. V.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013AGUSMSH51D..01F
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013AGUSMSH51D..01F
link got chopped in last post.
“”””an approximately six degree change over the past 40 years””””
In Gleissberg years that is 15 degrees of change…
The rotational aspect is quite intriquing as well..
…””””the local interstellar medium into the heliosphere may be rotating, with an approximately six degree change over the past 40 years. “””
Now if all three super shells nearby are rotating, does the solar system encounter alternating winds and alternating magnetic field polarity?