A couple of weeks ago, a massive solar flare released by the sun sent stargazers and space junkies into a twitter (literally I might add!). The amazing image below was captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) in extreme ultraviolet light at 131 Angstroms. Scientists say the bursts of radiation hurled by the solar blast were not in the direction of Earth (that’s the good news!), so there’ll be little impact to satellites and communication [...]
If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another…Solar Tsunami to Strike Earth
On August 1, 2010 cameras aboard NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured an eruption on the sun’s surface that hurled tons of plasma—charged gas—directly towards earth in an event called a coronal mass ejection. Wow, that sounds like it could be painful! The ionized clouds, which are bursts of charged particles, were expected to reach Earth’s atmosphere, by August 4, 2010 (today!). They may produce especially colorful auroras. Auroras happen when energized particles from the [...]
