BY KENNETH McDONAGH, DONEGAL WEATHER CHANNEL
NORTHERN LIGHTS ON THE WAY STRONG SOLAR ACTIVITY 5/3/12.
Donegal could be in for another Northern Lights experience.
Solar activity is now high. Big sunspot AR1429, which emerged on March 2nd, is crackling with strong flares. The strongest so far, an X1-class eruption, occured just ths morning, March 5th at 0413 UT. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the extreme ultraviolet flash
The explosion also hurled a bright coronal mass ejection (CME) into space: SOHO movie. The expanding cloud will probably deliver a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field on March 6th or 7th. (Stay tuned for updates on this possibility as more data arrive.) High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras in the nights ahead.
When the CME from today’s X-flare arrives, a geomagnetic storm might already be in progress. An earlier CME is en route and nearing our planet. According to analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab, the cloud, which was produced by an M2-class eruption from sunspot AR1429 on March 4th, could deliver a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field on March 6th at 04:30 UT (+/- 7 hr).
