Yesterday (April 14), a coronal mass ejection – caused by the extremely powerful solar prominence – erupted from the sun’s surface yesterday. Many online reports are saying its effects will reach Earth today, but that projection has been updated. It’s now thought this catastrophic event on the sun could result in a “glancing blow” to Earth’s magnetic field on or about April 17.
Wikimedia Commons
This movie shows a coronal mass ejection from 2001. These events feature an ejection of material from the sun’s corona (literally “crown”), the beautiful plasma atmosphere seen to extend from the sun during a total solar eclipse. The ejected material consists primarily of electrons and protons. Once it reaches Earth’s vicinity, it can knock out satellites and interfere with earthly communications.
This sort of event can also result in magnificent auroras – the famous northern or southern lights – often visible at high latitudes, and sometimes – when these sorts of events occur – even closer to the tropical regions on Earth. So be alert for auroras in the days ahead.
The beautiful golden image at the top of this post was taken by Jo Dahlmans of the Netherlands and posted at the site Spaceweather.com. It shows the solar prominence seen on April 14. A solar prominence is a bright extension from the sun’s surface which loop up many thousands of miles into space. The mass contained within a prominence is typically of the order of 100 billion tons of material. The prominence itself doesn’t effect Earth. It’s something that happens on the sun – like an alert signal that something else may be coming.
Why do they call it a “catastrophic event”?
Susan, I used the word “catastrophic” to refer to activity on the sun’s surface. Pretty much everything happening on the sun is catastrophic in contrast to our earthly lives! The sun is a great roiling ball of seething hot gases, powered by an internal thermonuclear furnace.
Catastrophic on the sun. Not on Earth.
Don’t worry.
Rosette
I believe because of the effects the CME will have on our telecommunication systems. If you use a cellphone you will notice issues with calls, etc.
Beautiful! Thanks for sharing this.
Around midnight this morning, there was a huge meteorite in Madisonville, LA. It appeared to be just above the treeline and was extremely bright and glowing – almost unreal like special effects in a movie. There was a glowing tail with visible white “sparks” trailing behind. We have never seen anything this closely before -and I’m thinking it’s a once in a lifetime sighting for us. Any connection to the event described in the article?
Donna’ at around 8pm. on april first or second I saw a glowing white ball with blue flames shooting from the front of it.I have never in my lifetime seen anything like it. It was flying low and very fast as soon as it was out of site we heard the fire engines going to the same directon. I live in Foxboro Ma, at the time this happend I was in Mansfield Ma next town over. My daughter and her husband saw the same thing once only they were on the highway and saw it hit into flames on the ground. it was to far away from to check it out. She didn’t say what state she was in at the time. She is always on the go. I assumed it was in Massachuttes. I dont watch the news often because I cant sleep when I do. Last night I saw a shooting star completey differant then the first, but twice in a lifetime wow.That was around midnite april 21 2010.