Today's H-alpha #Sun in good seeing conditions at 17:00 UTC.
There are not many days on which H-alpha views of the Sun include prominences that visualize the magnetic field lines above active regions particularly well, but today is definitely one of those days.
"The sun produced its biggest flare in nearly two decades Tuesday, just days after severe solar storms pummeled Earth and created dazzling northern lights in unaccustomed places."
AP reports: "The good news is that Earth should be out of the line of fire this time because the flare erupted on a part of the sun rotating away from Earth."
I'm afraid grandpa Sun Ultra 10 might have booted his last. He simply turned off and never turned back on over the period of however long my expire record in my DNS zones are (which is when I noticed).
It spent over 25 years computing quietly and never exhibiting any issues prior, it will be missed if I can't resurrect it.
Seeing the northern lights with my own eyes was an amazing experience this weekend! I wrote up a blog post about it and assembled a new video. Check it out!
3664
is headed 'round the bend
no knowing when
we'll see its like again
for a short time
it lit up the night
so wave to it goodbye
as it heads around the limb
of the Sun
Not a great image, because I was shooting around the clouds but I had to capture the source of our Aurora fun. That big chunk on the right side has been blasting us with solar mass to light up the sky!
Total cloud cover when I went to bed, no aurora for me last night. Here’s a view of the sun just now and the big spot causing all of the fuss. Desaturated to remove lens aberration colors. #sun#solarFlare#sunSpots
A rare severe geomagnetic storm watch is issued for the first time in nearly 20 years amid "unusual" solar event.
CBS News quotes the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): "Geomagnetic storms can impact infrastructure in near-Earth orbit and on Earth's surface, potentially disrupting communications, the electric power grid, navigation, radio and satellite operations."