NASA SDO: Largest Sunspot in 24 Years Mystifies Scientists

The Jupiter-sized sunspot AR 12192 is the largest active region seen on the sun in 24 years. 

Credit: NASA SDO

The biggest sunspot to grace the face of the sun in more than two decades just rotated out of Earth's view, but it was responsible for kicking up some truly amazing solar activity this week.

The sunspot (called Active Region 12192 or AR 2192) shot off four powerful flares in four days recently, with many more smaller flares sprinkled in as well.

The sunspot region was about the size of the planet Jupiter and is the largest solar flare observed in 24 years.

AR 2192 was actually one of the biggest observed sunspots of all time, ranking 33rd largest of 32,908 active regions since 1874, according to NASA scientists C. Alex Young and Dean Pesnell. But how does a sunspot grow this big?

"The simple answer is we really don't know," Young told reporters.

"Being close to solar maximum [the peak in the sun's 11-year solar cycle] means there is more concentrated magnetic field and magnetic energy under the solar surface waiting to bubble up, but the question of why it comes up as one spot instead of two or more is really still unknown, a mystery."

"I guess a good analogy is when you twist a rubber band or piece of string," Young added. "Why do, say, three knots or bunches form instead of two or four?"

"The physics is probably too complicated for us at this point but we can get a handle on, say, when the knots will start to form once we better understand the properties of the rubber band or string and how much twist we put into them. We are not to that point with the sun but we may get there eventually."

The largest sunspot since November 1990 is seen traveling across the front of the sun in these images from NASA's SDO, captured Oct. 17-Oct 29, 2014.

Image Credit: NASA/SDO

Sunspots are active areas on the sun. They generally form when magnetic field lines are warped, and if they become twisted.

Part of it may break out, and show up on the face of the star. Sunspots look dark because they are cooler than the area surrounding them.

This sunspot is particularly special because of the somewhat strange way scientists have seen it behave.



Instead of shooting out huge bursts of plasma, called coronal mass ejections (CMEs), with powerful flares, the giant sunspot hasn't produced significant CMEs during its time rotating in view of Earth, according to Young.

"What's really curious about it [the large sunspot] is that it's produced so many flares of pretty good size, but little or no coronal mass ejections," Young said.

"It's not that it's never happened before, but it tends to be the case that when you have a big flare, you generally get a big CME."

Earth-directed CMEs are responsible for geomagnetic storms that can harm satellites in orbit or even knock out power grids on the planet.

A CME produced by a sunspot larger than AR 2192 knocked out the power in Quebec, Canada, in 1989, Young said.

The sunspot just rotated out of view of Earth, according to Spaceweather.com, but that doesn't necessarily mean that AR 2192 won't make another appearance on Earth's side of the star.

NASA SDO: Tracking a gigantic sunspot across the Sun

Super sunspot AR2192 produced 10 significant solar flare while traversing the Earth-side of the sun; six X-class and four above M5-class. 

Credit: NASA/SDO

An active region on the sun, an area of intense and complex magnetic fields, rotated into view on Oct. 18, 2014.

Labeled AR2192, it soon grew into the largest such region in 24 years, and fired off 10 sizable solar flares as it traversed across the face of the sun.

The region was so large it could be seen without a telescope for those looking at the sun with eclipse glasses, as many did during a partial eclipse of the sun on Oct. 23.

"Despite all the flares, this region did not produce any significant coronal mass ejections," said Alex Young a solar scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland."

"Coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, are giant clouds of solar particles that can affect technology when they reach near-Earth space."

"You certainly can have flares without CMEs and vice versa, but most big flares do have CMEs. So we're learning that a big active region doesn't always equal the biggest events."

The largest sunspot since November 1990 is seen traveling across the front of the sun in these images from NASA's SDO, captured Oct. 17-Oct 29, 2014. 

Credit: NASA/SDO

Such active regions are measured in millionths of a solar hemisphere, where 1 micro-hemisphere, or MH, is about 600,000 square miles.

This region topped out at 2,750 MH, making it the 33rd largest region out of approximately 32,000 active regions that have been tracked and measured since 1874.

It is the largest sunspot seen since AR 6368, which measured 3,080 MH on Nov. 18, 1990.

The largest five active regions ever observed were between 4,000 and more than 6,000 MH and they all appeared between 1946 and 1951.

On the other hand, the region that produced one of the biggest solar flares of all time on Sep. 1, 1859, in what's known as the Carrington event, wasn't even one of the top 50 at only 2,300 MH.

During its trip across the front of the sun, AR 12192 produced six X-class flares, which are the largest flares, and four strong M-class flares. M-class flares are one tenth as strong as X-class flares.

The number provides more information about its strength. An M2 is twice as intense as an M1, an M3 is three times as intense, etc.

"Having so many similar flares from the same active region will be a nice case study for people who work on predicting solar flares," said Dean Pesnell, project scientist for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory at Goddard.

"This is important for one day improving the nation's ability to forecast space weather and protect technology and astronauts in space."



This movie shows fireworks on the sun as 10 significant flares erupted on the sun from Oct. 19-28, 2014. 

The graph shows X-ray output from the sun as measured by NOAA’s GOES spacecraft. The X-rays peak in sync with each flare. 

Credit:  NASA/SDO/NOAA/GOES

AR 12192 rotated onto the far side of the sun on Oct. 30, 2014, however as it evolves, we may see a new version of it rotating back into view in two weeks.

Giant Sunspot Keeps Firing Off Huge Solar Flares

The largest sunspot observed on the sun in more than 20 years has been firing off powerful solar flares for the past week, and it's still producing strong solar storms.

Today, the huge sunspot erupted with a large solar flare, peaking at around 10:47 a.m. EDT (1447 GMT).

The flare caused a strong radio blackout on Earth, according to the National Weather Service's Space Weather Prediction Center. This solar flare is the fourth X-flare (the most powerful kind of solar storms) in as many days.

On Sunday (Oct. 26), the giant sunspot unleashed a solar flare, which peaked at about 6:56 a.m. EDT (1056 GMT). The sunspot, called Active Region 12192 (also known as AR 2192), also shot out another powerful flare on Saturday. Today and Sunday's flares measured in at X2, while Saturday's is classified as an X1 flare.

Sunday's X2-class flare was "the third X-class flare in 48 hours, erupting from the largest active region seen on the sun in 24 years," NASA spokesperson Karen Fox wrote in an update yesterday (Oct. 26). AR 2129 also shot out an X3.1-class flare on Friday (Oct. 24).

The sun unleashed an X2-class solar flare on Oct. 26, 2014. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this photo of the flare (lower right).

Credit: NASA/SDO

NASA SDO: Electromagnetic 'Twisted rope' clue to dangerous solar storms

Model of the magnetic field in the region where occurred a major flare on December 13th 2006. 

This model has been obtained using magnetic field data obtained at the surface of the Sun by the satellite HINODE and the high resolution model MESHMHD few hours before the eruption. 

It shows that a magnetic rope (grey) is maintained in equilibrium by overlaying arcades (orange). 

Credit: Tahar Amari /Centre de physique théorique.CNRS-Ecole Polytechnique.FRANCE.

A "twisted rope" of magnetically-charged energy precedes solar storms that have the potential to damage satellites and electricity grids, French scientists said on Wednesday.

A cord of magnetic flux emerges on the Sun's surface, grows and is squeezed upwards, and the following day, the star unleashes a blast of radiation, high-energy particles and magnetised plasma.

Solar outbursts are considered a rare but increasingly worrisome risk for satellites, global positioning systems (GPS) and power grids on which modern life depends.

Reporting in the journal Nature, a team led by Tahar Amari of France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) looked at a solar storm that brewed in December 2006 and happened to be observed by a Japanese scientific satellite.

"We were able to identify the source of the eruption four days before it developed," Amari said to reporters.

"The magnetic field builds up in the shape of a twisted rope. The ends of the rope are anchored in sunspots," he said, referring to notoriously magnetised features on the solar surface.

Experts say solar storms can cause widespread breakdowns, disabling everything from power and radio to GPS geo-location and water supplies which rely on electrical pumps.

View of typical solar eruption using data from the NASA Solar Dynamic Observatory space mission. 

The Earth has been shown to show the gigantic size of the phenomena 

Credit: Tahar Amari /Centre de physique théorique.CNRS-Ecole Polytechnique.FRANCE

They begin with an explosion on the Sun's surface, known as a solar flare, sending X-rays and extreme ultra-violet radiation towards Earth at light speed.

Hours later, energetic particles follow and these electrons and protons can electrify satellites and damage their electronics.

Next are coronal mass ejections (CME), billion-tonne clouds of magnetised plasma that take a day or more to cross the Sun-Earth gap.

A solar storm in 1859 caused an electrical surge on telegraph lines that prompted some offices to catch fire and operators to receive shocks. A 1989 event caused power outages for five million people in the Canadian province of Quebec.

A 2009 report by a panel of scientists assembled by NASA warned that a catastrophic solar storm could cost the United States alone up to two trillion dollars (1.6 trillion euros) in repairs in the first year, and it could take up to 10 years to fully recover.

Predicting when these events will take place, and if Earth lies in their path, has been thwart with problems.

Eruption of the magnetic rope in the dynamic model METEOSOL after its departure from equilibrium 

Credit: Tahar Amari /Centre de physique théorique.CNRS-Ecole Polytechnique.FRANCE

On July 23, 2012, Earth narrowly missed the biggest storm in 150 years, an event big enough to "knock modern civilisation back to the 18th century," yet few humans were even aware of the peril, NASA said last July.

At present, Earth gets a few hours' warning of a solar eruption thanks to the eyes of orbiting US satellites.

But, said Amari, warning time should eventually improve.

"The work will help us fine tune knowledge about impending solar eruptions," he said.

"Using real-time magnetic data and mathematical models, it will eventually be possible to predict space weather."

More information: Characterizing and predicting the magnetic environment leading to solar eruptions, Nature, dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature13815

Solar Storm Would Have Wreaked Havoc On Earth: Multiple Views - Video

On July 23rd, 2012, a coronal mass ejection, traveling between 1,800 and 2,200 MPH, fastest ever recorded by NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), fortunately was not Earth-directed.

NASA IRIS Mission: X-Flare - Close-up of Sunspot - Video

NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) mission can only study small areas of the Sun's surface at a time.

This week’s mission planner pointed the probe at promising sunspot AR2158 just in time for an X1.6-class flare.

Searing plasma "lines" spark and shift at several hundred miles per hour during the flare.



Sun Unleashes Major Solar Flare at Earth.

A coronal mass ejection burst off the side of the sun on May 9, 2014. The giant sheet of solar material erupting was the first CME seen by NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS).

The field of view seen here is about five Earth's wide and about seven and a half Earth's tall.

NASA SDO: Extreme Solar Flare heading to Earth

The Sun by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. 

Credit: NASA

Scientists say an extreme X-Class solar flare is blasting its way to Earth and could mess up some power grids, satellites and radio transmissions.

Forecasters at NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center don't yet know when Wednesday's solar storm will arrive here and which part of the planet will be facing the sun and bear the brunt of the effects.

It could be as early as Thursday morning to a few days.

Prediction Center director Tom Berger said scientists will have a better idea after they get more satellite data.

The X-Class flare is considered extreme on forecasters' scale, but just barely. Flares like this cause geomagnetic storms which can knock some power grids offline temporarily.

They also can damage satellites and disrupt radio transmissions but they expand the colourful Aurora Borealis (northern lights).

Intense Solar Eruption Captured by NASA SDO Spacecraft - Video

A huge tendril of super-hot plasma that had been creeping across the face of the sun erupted Tuesday (Sept. 2) in a striking solar storm that may send a wave of charged particles in Earth's direction.

Video of the solar eruption captured by NASA's sun-watching Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows a cloud of solar plasma being hurled from the sun's surface during the rippling blast.

Debris from the solar explosion could be traveling in the direction of Earth, according to Spaceweather.com, which tracks stargazing and space weather events.

Further observations should confirm whether the eruption was actually an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection, or CME.

CMEs occur when the sun's magnetic field lines become so warped that they snap like rubber bands then reconnect at other points.

These breaks can leave gaps where the sun's plasma spews into space.

CMEs can occasionally spark geomagnetic storms when they collide with Earth.

These disturbances can interfere with electronics, cause radio blackouts and produce stunning auroras.

In the days before the eruption, the filament of dark plasma looked like a long shadow on the sun that stretched some 372,823 miles (600,000 kilometers), that's more than three times the diameter of Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system.

Amateur astrophotographers from around the world had been sending Spaceweather.com amazing amazing images of the filament over the past few days.

NASA SDO STEREO: Earth survived near-miss during 2012 solar storm

Photo released by Nasa Earth Observatory on June 7, 2011 and taken from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows the Sun unleashing a solar flare, radiation storm and a coronal mass ejection

Credit: NASA SDO

Back in 2012, the Sun erupted with a powerful solar storm that just missed the Earth but was big enough to "knock modern civilization back to the 18th century," NASA said.

The extreme space weather that tore through Earth's orbit on July 23, 2012, was the most powerful in 150 years, according to a statement posted on the US space agency website Wednesday.

However, few Earthlings had any idea what was going on.

"If the eruption had occurred only one week earlier, Earth would have been in the line of fire," said Daniel Baker, professor of atmospheric and space physics at the University of Colorado.

Instead the storm cloud hit the STEREO-A spacecraft, a solar observatory that is "almost ideally equipped to measure the parameters of such an event," NASA said.

Scientists have analyzed the treasure trove of data it collected and concluded that it would have been comparable to the largest known space storm in 1859, known as the Carrington event.

It also would have been twice as bad as the 1989 solar storm that knocked out power across Quebec, scientists said.

"I have come away from our recent studies more convinced than ever that Earth and its inhabitants were incredibly fortunate that the 2012 eruption happened when it did," said Baker.

The National Academy of Sciences has said the economic impact of a storm like the one in 1859 could cost the modern economy more than two trillion dollars and cause damage that might take years to repair.

Experts say solar storms can cause widespread power blackouts, disabling everything from radio to GPS communications to water supplies, most of which rely on electric pumps.

They begin with an explosion on the Sun's surface, known as a solar flare, sending X-rays and extreme UV radiation toward Earth at light speed.

Hours later, energetic particles follow and these electrons and protons can electrify satellites and damage their electronics.

Next are the coronal mass ejections, billion-ton clouds of magnetized plasma that take a day or more to cross the Sun-Earth divide.

These are often deflected by Earth's magnetic shield, but a direct hit could be devastating.

There is a 12 percent chance of a super solar storm the size of the Carrington event hitting Earth in the next 10 years, according to physicist Pete Riley, who published a paper in the journal Space Weather on the topic.

His research was based on an analysis of solar storm records going back 50 years.

"Initially, I was quite surprised that the odds were so high, but the statistics appear to be correct," said Riley.

"It is a sobering figure."

The sun has gone quiet: Sunspots and CME

The Sun by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. 

Credit: NASA

The sun has gone quiet. Almost too quiet.

A few weeks ago it was teeming with sunspots, as you would expect since we are supposed to be in the middle of solar maximum-the time in the sun's 11-year cycle when it is the most active but now, there is hardly a sunspot in sight.

In an image taken Friday by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, there is a tiny smidgen of brown just right of center where a small sunspot appears to be developing. But just one day before, there was nothing. It was a totally spotless day.

So what's going on here? Is the "All Quiet Event" as solar physicist Tony Phillips dubbed it, a big deal, or not?

"It is weird, but it's not super weird," said Phillips, who writes about solar activity on his web site SpaceWeather.com.

"To have a spotless day during solar maximum is odd, but then again, this solar maximum we are in has been very wimpy."

Phillips notes that this is the weakest solar maximum to have been observed in the space age, and it is shaking out to be the weakest one in the past 100 years, so the spotless day was not so totally out of left field.

"It all underlines that solar physicists really don't know what the heck is happening on the sun," Phillips said.

"We just don't know how to predict the sun, that is the take away message of this event."

Sunspots are interesting to solar observers because they are the region of the sun where solar activity such as solar flares (giant flashes of light) and coronal mass ejections (when material from the sun goes shooting off into space) originate.

They are caused by highly concentrated magnetic fields that are slightly cooler than the surrounding surface of the sun, which is why they appear dark to us.

Those intense magnetic fields can get twisted up and tangled, which causes a lot of energy to build up. Solar flares and coronal mass ejections occur when that energy is released in a very explosive way.

Alex Young, a heliophysicist at Goddard Space Flight Center, said it is hard to say what is and isn't unusual when it comes to the sun.

"We've only been observing the sun in lots of detail in the last 50 years," he said.

"That's not that long considering it's been around for 4.5 billion years." And it's not like astronomers have never seen the sun this quiet before.

Three years ago, on Aug. 14, 2011 it was completely free of sunspots and, as Phillips points out, that year turned out to have relatively high solar activity overall with several X-class flares.

So in that case, the spotless sun was just a "temporary intermission," as he writes on his web site.

Whether this quiet period will be similarly short-lived or if it will last longer remains to be seen.

"You just can't predict the sun," Phillips said.

Messenger and Stereo Open New Window Into Solar Processes

A solar flare erupted on the far side of the sun on June 4, 2011, and sent solar neutrons out into space. 

Solar neutrons don't make it to all the way to Earth, but NASA's MESSENGER, orbiting Mercury, found strong evidence for the neutrons, offering a new technique to study these giant explosions. 

Image courtesy NASA /STEREO /Helioviewer. 

Understanding the sun from afar isn't easy. How do you figure out what powers solar flares, the intense bursts of radiation coming from the release of magnetic energy associated with sunspots, when you must rely on observing only the light and particles that make their way to near-Earth's orbit?

One answer: you get closer. NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, which orbits Mercury, and so is as close as 28 million miles from the sun versus Earth's 93 million miles, is near enough to the sun to detect solar neutrons that are created in solar flares.

The average lifetime for one of these neutrons is only 15 minutes.

How far they travel into space depends on their speed, and slower neutrons don't travel far enough to be seen by particle detectors in orbit around Earth.

Results showing that MESSENGER has likely observed solar neutrons appeared in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics.

"To understand all the processes on the sun we look at as many different particles coming from the sun as we can, photons, electrons, protons, neutrons, gamma rays, to gather different kinds of information," said David Lawrence, first author of the paper at The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Maryland.

"Closer to Earth we can observe charged particles from the sun, but analyzing them can be a challenge as their journey is affected by magnetic fields."

Such charged particles twirl and gyrate around the magnetic field lines created by the vast magnetic systems that surround the sun and Earth.

Neutrons, however, as they are not electrically charged, travel in straight lines from the flaring region. They can carry information about flare processes unperturbed by the environment through which they move.

This information can be used by scientists to decipher one aspect of the complicated acceleration processes that are responsible for the creation of highly energetic and fast solar particles.

Lawrence and his team looked at MESSENGER data from June 4 and 5, 2011, corresponding to solar flares that were accompanied by fast-moving, energetic charged particles.

The flare occurred on the far side of the sun so Earth-based views of the flare region could not be obtained.

However, a solar telescope on NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), spacecraft did have a clear view of the far-side flare region.

STEREO provided useful observations of the flare.

This combined use of NASA mission data makes each individual mission more effective in addressing unsolved science questions.

The MESSENGER data showed an increase in the number of - not electrically charged, neutrons at Mercury's orbit hours before the large number of charged particles reached the spacecraft.

This indicated that the neutrons were most likely produced by accelerated flare particles striking the lower solar atmosphere, releasing neutrons as a result of high-energy collisions.

So, together, the MESSENGER and STEREO data can provide new information about how particles are accelerated in solar flares.

SOHO views X-class solar flare

The Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) resulting from the big X-class solar flare on 10 June 2014 as seen through the LASCO C2 instrument of the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).

LASCO (Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph) is able to take images of the solar corona by blocking the light coming directly from the Sun with an occulter disk, creating an artificial eclipse within the instrument itself.

SOHO is a project of international collaboration between ESA and NASA to study the Sun from its deep core to the outer corona and the solar wind. More about SOHO:

Credits: SOHO (ESA & NASA)

Giant Sun Plasma Tendril: Solar Eruption - SDO Video

A massive formation on the sun made of super-hot magnetic plasma erupted this week in an explosive solar storm captured on video by NASA's SDO spacecraft.

The huge plasma tendril, known as a solar filament, erupted on Wednesday (June 4), blowing part of itself out into space in what astronomers call a coronal mass ejection (CME).

NASA's powerful Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded a video of the solar filament eruption while the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) tracked the subsequent CME.

Astronomer Tony Phillips of Spaceweather.com, a website that tracks solar flare events, wrote in a post Thursday (June 5) that amateur and professional astronomers had watched the filament for more than a week to see how it would meet its end.

"Astronomers had been bracing for the possibility that the filament would collapse, causing a Hyder flare when it landed on the solar surface," Phillips wrote in the June 5 post. "Instead, it erupted and hurled part of itself into space."

Phillips added that the solar eruption was not aimed directly at Earth, but could deal a "glancing blow" to the planet's magnetic field on Saturday (June 7), possibly amplifying northern lights displays.

A giant solar plasma filament on the sun rising up off the star's surface on June 4, 2014 in this full-disk view from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. 

The filament ultimately triggered a solar eruption known as a coronal mass ejection.

Credit: NASA/SDO

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and SOHO, a joint mission by NASA and the European Space Agency, are part of a fleet of space observatories regularly watching the sun for signs of solar storms, eruptions and flares.

The most powerful solar eruptions can pose a danger to astronauts and spacecraft in space, as well as interrupt satellite navigation and communications systems. They can also interfere with ground-based power and communications systems.

Strong and moderate solar storms can also supercharge the Earth's auroras, triggering dazzling northern lights shows.

NASA's IRIS: Observing a gigantic CME eruption of solar material

A coronal mass ejection, or CME, surged off the side of the sun on May 9, 2014, and NASA's newest solar observatory caught it in extraordinary detail. 

This was the first CME observed by the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS), which launched in June 2013 to peer into the lowest levels of the sun's atmosphere with better resolution than ever before. 

IRIS must commit to pointing at certain areas of the sun at least a day in advance, so catching a CME in the act involves some educated guesses and a little bit of luck.

"We focus in on active regions to try to see a flare or a CME," said Bart De Pontieu, the IRIS science lead at Lockheed Martin Solar & Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto, California. "And then we wait and hope that we'll catch something. This is the first clear CME for IRIS so the team is very excited."

The IRIS imagery focuses in on material of 30,000 kelvins at the base, or foot points, of the CME.

The line moving across the middle of the movie is the entrance slit for IRIS's spectrograph, an instrument that can split light into its many wavelengths, a technique that ultimately allows scientists to measure temperature, velocity and density of the solar material behind the slit.

The field of view for this imagery is about five Earths wide and about seven-and-a-half Earths tall.


Watch the movie to see how a curtain of solar material erupts outward at speeds of 1.5 million miles per hour.

A coronal mass ejection burst off the side of the sun on May 9, 2014. The giant sheet of solar material erupting was the first CME seen by NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS). 

The field of view seen here is about five Earths wide and about seven-and-a-half Earths tall. Credit: NASA/LMSAL/IRIS/SDO/Goddard

NASA Stereo: Carrington-class CME narrowly misses Earth

Last month (April 8-11), scientists, government officials, emergency planners and others converged on Boulder, Colorado, for NOAA's Space Weather Workshop—an annual gathering to discuss the perils and probabilities of solar storms.

The current solar cycle is weaker than usual, so you might expect a correspondingly low-key meeting.

On the contrary, the halls and meeting rooms were abuzz with excitement about an intense solar storm that narrowly missed Earth.

"If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces," says Daniel Baker of the University of Colorado, who presented a talk entitled The Major Solar Eruptive Event in July 2012: Defining Extreme Space Weather Scenarios.

The close shave happened almost two years ago. On July 23, 2012, a plasma cloud or Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) rocketed away from the sun as fast as 3000 km/s, more than four times faster than a typical eruption.

The storm tore through Earth orbit, but fortunately Earth wasn't there. Instead it hit the STEREO-A spacecraft.

Researchers have been analyzing the data ever since, and they have concluded that the storm was one of the strongest in recorded history.

"It might have been stronger than the Carrington Event itself," says Baker.

The Carrington Event of Sept. 1859 was a series of powerful CMEs that hit Earth head-on, sparking Northern Lights as far south as Tahiti.

Intense geomagnetic storms caused global telegraph lines to spark, setting fire to some telegraph offices and disabling the 'Victorian Internet."

A similar storm today could have a catastrophic effect on modern power grids and telecommunication networks.

According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences, the total economic impact could exceed $2 trillion or 20 times greater than the costs of a Hurricane Katrina. Multi-ton transformers fried by such a storm could take years to repair and impact national security.


This movie shows a coronal mass ejection (CME) on the sun from July 22, 2012, at 10:00 p.m. EDT until 2 a.m. on July 23 as captured by NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory-Ahead (STEREO A). 

Because the CME headed in STEREO A’s direction, it appears like a giant halo around the sun.

A recent paper in Nature Communications authored by UC Berkeley space physicist Janet G. Luhmann and former postdoc Ying D. Liu describes what gave the July 2012 storm Carrington-like potency.

For one thing, the CME was actually two CMEs separated by only 10 to 15 minutes. This double storm cloud traveled through a region of space that had been cleared out by another CME only four days earlier.

As a result, the CMEs were not decelerated as much as usual by their transit through the interplanetary medium.

Had the eruption occurred just one week earlier, the blast site would have been facing Earth, rather than off to the side, so it was a relatively narrow escape.

When the Carrington Event enveloped Earth in the 19th century, technologies of the day were hardly sensitive to electromagnetic disturbances.

Modern society, on the other hand, is deeply dependent on sun-sensitive technologies such as GPS, satellite communications and the internet.

"The effect of such a storm on our modern technologies would be tremendous," says Luhmann.

More Information: Observations of an extreme storm in interplanetary space caused by successive coronal mass ejections - Authors: Ying D. Liu, Janet G. Luhmann et al. doi:10.1038/ncomms4481

NASA SDO: Mid-level M9.3 solar flare observed

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captures images of the sun in many wavelengths of light at the same time, each of which is typically in a different color. 

Each wavelength shows different aspects of the same event, as seen in these three images of a solar flare on March 12, 2014. 

Credit: NASA /SDO /Goddard Space Flight Center

The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 6:34 p.m. EDT on March 12, 2014, and NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), captured an image 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, the U.S. government's official source for space weather forecasts, alerts, watches and warnings.

This flare is classified as an M9.3 flare, just slightly weaker than the most intense flares, which are labeled X-class.

The letters denote broad categories of strength, while the numbers provide more information. An M2 is twice as intense as an M1, an M3 is three times as intense, etc.

This M9.3 flare was emitted by an active region, a magnetically strong and complex region on the sun's surface, labeled AR 11996.

Updates will be provided as they are available on the flare and whether there was an associated coronal mass ejection, or CME, another solar phenomenon that can send solar particles into space and affect electronic systems in satellites and on Earth.

NASA SDO: Giant sunspot making third rotation across surface of the sun

A massive and significantly strong sunspot is currently making its third pass across a “complex region” of the Sun, according to NASA.

Sunspots like the one currently being tracked by NASA and NOAA, are part of the active Sun regions which typically produce large solar flares and coronal mass ejections.

Sunspot AR1990 was previously labeled AR1967 while on its second rotation around the Sun, and AR1944, during its initial trip around the face of the Sun.

As previously reported by NASA, the largest solar flare of 2014 was unleashed by the Sun late last week.

The huge X Class solar flare erupted from sunspot AR1990, according to NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).

The agency’s spacecraft recorder captured the gigantic bursts of plasma from the coronal mass ejection – CME.

X Class solar flares are the strongest type of solar storms. The massive solar flare was not Earth-directed, so the power grid was not in jeopardy.

If the 4.9 X Class solar flare had been directed towards Earth, the CME could have likely prompted a significant geomagnetic storm.

During such a storm charged particles smash against the Earth’s magnetic field. The Sun is currently in the most active phase of its 11-year solar cycle.

NASA Maven: Looking for Mars' missing atmosphere - Video

NASA's MAVEN satellite will measure the process affecting the remaining atmosphere on Mars. 

These include incoming Solar Energetic Particles (SEPs), escape on a molecule-by-molecule basis (Jeans Escape), the effect of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and extreme solar ultraviolent radiation (EUVs). 

Credit: The Lunar and Planetary Institute and LASP

Ninety kilometers over our heads, the sky is glowing. During the day, the Sun turns the top of our sky into a sea of electrons.

They flow over one another without friction, creating plasma. Radio waves that hit these electrons bounce back to Earth, allowing transmissions to literally turns corners and circle the globe.

The free electron layer conducts current and responds to magnetic fields. As a result, during solar storms this part of the atmosphere lights up, creating undulating auroras.

While liberated, the electrons devise visual spectacles and technical challenges, but the atoms they leave behind must content themselves with being ions.

For this reason, this part of our atmosphere is known as the ionosphere. It's the largest part of our atmosphere, and does a commensurately big job.

It absorbs x-rays that would otherwise destroy life on Earth. If it weren't for our atmosphere, Earth might look a good deal more like Mars.


Why Mars doesn't look more like Earth is the subject of ongoing study. The loss of most of the atmosphere is believed to have been a major factor in Mars turning away from the path of water, warmth and habitability.

Uncovering where that atmosphere went, when and why is the mission of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) satellite.

Scheduled to arrive in September, MAVEN carries with it two instruments designed to probe the remaining ionosphere for clues about the past four billion years, and what will happen going forward.

Our first direct glimpse at ions in the upper atmosphere will be courtesy of the Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer (NGIMS). Mass spectrometers like NGIMS are ubiquitous in the world of physical science.

They function like the ionosphere itself: by bombarding specimens with electrons and creating ions. This process allows mass spectrometers to divine the contents of a liquid, solid or gas.

Small and durable, as well as extremely useful, mass spectrometers have been placed on dozens of satellites and rovers, including NASA's Mars rover Curiosity.

To find Mars' missing atmosphere, NGIMS will search for certain elements and molecules in the Martian ionosphere: helium, argon, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide.

It will note how often each occurs in its neutral and ionized states over 170 miles of sky. It will also count the abundance of heavy and light versions of atoms, also known as isotopes.

Counting isotopes may hold the key to atmospheric loss. The Earth, the Sun and Jupiter have balanced amounts of heavy and light argon isotopes.

These bodies have also retained their atmospheres over time. Mars has too much heavy argon and almost no atmosphere. The heavy argon left behind likely represents the original volume of the atmosphere; light argon reflects the lost air.

"The lighter atom in an isotope pair is able to leave the upper atmosphere just a bit faster than the heavier atom," said NGIMS principle investigator Paul Mahaffey.

"Our direct measurement of the vertical distribution of these isotope pairs will let us understand the physics of escape better and ultimately understand how much of the atmosphere has been lost in the past several billions of years."

22kg IUVS instrument. Credit: LASP, Colorado

As NGIMS tries to catch light argon in the act of leaving the planet, it will also watch space weather and dust storms change the composition of the atmosphere: mixing up molecules near the bottom of the ionosphere and sending others on one-way trips into deep space.

While NGIMS picks out particles one by one, the UltraViolet Spectrograph (IUVS) will be making sweeping, planetary-wide maps.

"IUVS and NGIMS are backups for each other," said IUVS Principle investigator Nick Schneider, "They both measure the composition & structure of the atmosphere.

Nick Schneider

And we're complementary in measuring different isotopes. IUVS measures the [ratio of heavy to light hydrogen] and NGIMS measures isotopes of heavier elements."

As the most powerful ultraviolent spectrograph to ever be sent to another planet, IUVS is exquisitely sensitive to composition and temperature variations of entire upper atmosphere.

The temperature and composition of Mars' atmosphere varies dramatically, not only by altitude, but also by orbit.

At perihelion, when Mars is closest to the Sun, it is 40 million miles closer than at aphelion, when it is farthest away.

The difference in distance means that much more of the Sun's energy will be reaching Mars during certain times of year. As a result, we expect ultraviolet readings at perihelion and aphelion to vary widely.

"But we anticipate seeing changes from other causes too: solar storms like flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CME's), and dust storms on Mars too," said Schneider.

"These each have the potential to control atmospheric escape on Mars, so we'll be watching them all."

NGIMS instrument, just prior to integration with into the MAVEN spacecraft. Credit: NASA/Goddard

NASA IRIS: Providing unprecedented images of Sun

The fine detail in images of prominences in the sun's atmosphere from NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrometer (IRIS) -- such as the red swirls shown here -- are challenging the way scientists understand such events. 

Credit: NASA/LMSAL /IRIS

The region located between the surface of the sun and its atmosphere has been revealed as a more violent place than previously understood, according to images and data from NASA's newest solar observatory, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, (IRIS).

Solar observatories look at the sun in layers. By capturing light emitted by atoms of different temperatures, they can focus in on different heights above the sun's surface extending well out into the solar atmosphere, the corona.

On June 27, 2013, IRIS, was launched, to study what's known as the interface region – a layer between the sun's surface and corona that previously was not well observed.

Over its first six moths, IRIS has thrilled scientists with detailed images of the interface region, finding even more turbulence and complexity than expected.

IRIS scientists presented the mission's early observations at a press conference at the Fall American Geophysical Union meeting on Dec. 9, 2013.

Alan Title

"The quality of images and spectra we are receiving from IRIS is amazing," said Alan Title, IRIS principal investigator at Lockheed Martin in Palo Alto, Calif. "And we're getting this kind of quality from a smaller, less expensive mission, which took only 44 months to build."

For the first time, IRIS is making it possible to study the explosive phenomena in the interface region in sufficient detail to determine their role in heating the outer solar atmosphere.

The mission's observations also open a new window into the dynamics of the low solar atmosphere that play a pivotal role in accelerating the solar wind and driving solar eruptive events.

Tracking the complex processes in the interface region requires instrument and modeling capabilities that are only now within our technological reach.

IRIS captures both images and what's known as spectra, which display how much of any given wavelength of light is present.

This, in turn, corresponds to how much material in the solar atmosphere is present at specific velocities, temperatures and densities.

IRIS's success is due not only to its high spatial and temporal resolution, but also because of parallel development of advanced computer models.

The combined images and spectra have provided new imagery of a region that was always known to be dynamic, but shows it to be even more violent and turbulent than imagined.

This is an artist's concept of the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, satellite in orbit. Credit: NASA

"We are seeing rich and unprecedented images of violent events in which gases are accelerated to very high velocities while being rapidly heated to hundreds of thousands of degrees," said Bart De Pontieu, the IRIS science lead at Lockheed Martin.

"These types of observations present significant challenges to current theoretical models."



This video compares the Solar Dynamics Observatory's (SDO) resolution with the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) resolution for the same region of the Sun

NASA SOHO: Capture an Earth directed coronal mass ejection (CME)

The SOHO LASCO C2 instrument captured this image of the Earth-directed CME. SOHO's coronographs are able to take images of the solar corona by blocking the light coming directly from the Sun with an occulter disk. 

The location of the actual sun is shown with an image taken by SDO. 

Credit: ESA & NASA/SOHO, SDO

On August 20, 2013 at 4:24 am EDT, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon which can send billions of tons of particles into space that can reach Earth one to three days later.

These particles cannot travel through the atmosphere to harm humans on Earth, but they can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground.

Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory show that the CME left the sun at speeds of around 570 miles per second, which is a fairly typical speed for CMEs.

Earth-directed CMEs can cause a space weather phenomenon called a geomagnetic storm, which occurs when they funnel energy into Earth's magnetic envelope, the magnetosphere, for an extended period of time.

The CME's magnetic fields peel back the outermost layers of Earth's fields changing their very shape. In the past, geomagnetic storms caused by CMEs of this strength have usually been mild.

Magnetic storms can degrade communication signals and cause unexpected electrical surges in power grids. They also can cause aurora.

The SOHO LASCO C3 instrument captured this coronographic image of the Earth-directed CME. 

The bright white object to the right is the planet Mercury. 

Credit: ESA & NASA/SOHO