Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 18,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

The CME strike on August 5th spawned one of the strongest geomagnetic storms in years. The magnetic disturbances rang the Earth like a bell and the magnetic field is still reverberating.

Spectacular aurora displays were seen across Europe and in many northern-tier US states.

Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab say that the CME impact may have strongly compressed Earth’s magnetic field, directly exposing satellites in geosynchronous orbit to solar wind plasma.

Another rare phenomenon was triggered by the M9-class solar flare of August 4th – a rare below the horizon solar radio burst. The flare produced a burst of shortwave static so powerful that receivers on Earth picked it up after sunset. Amateur radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft’s radio telescope in New Mexico recorded the event 1 hour and 54 minutes after sunset and is shown below.

Nothing even remotely similar has been detected since the 1950′s. For more information on solar radio bursts click links below:

Report of an unusual solar radio burst that happened in 1958

Solar Radio Burst Classifications

Another indication showing the severe nature of the storm is the K-index. The K-index quantifies disturbances in the horizontal component of earth’s magnetic field on a scale of 0-9 with 1 being calm and 5 or more indicating a geomagnetic storm. Geomagnetic storms have been associated with satellite surface charging and increased atmospheric drag.

Aug. 5, 2011 – 2nd Wave

CME Arrival Time: 2011-08-05 13:55:10.0 GMT (Aug 5 – 11:55 am edt)
Arival Time Confidence Level: ± 6 hours
Disturbance Duration: 5 hours
Disturbance Duration Confidence Level: ± 8 hours

Aug. 5, 2011 – 1st Wave

The first of three CMEs produced by the recent flare activity reached Earth during the late hours of August 4th. The impact was weak and did not produce strong geomagnetic storms – mostly level 1.  Two more CMEs are still on the way and, as described below, they have merged into a single cloud that could produce significant storming when they reach Earth.

NASA is predicting that G3 (Strong) Geomagnetic Storm conditions are likely as well as a distinct chance of S2 (Moderate) Solar Radiation Storm levels being surpassed for the morning hours today.

G3 (Strong) Geomagnetic Storm Characteristics

Power systems: voltage corrections may be required, false alarms triggered on some protection devices.

Spacecraft operations: surface charging may occur on satellite components, drag may increase on low-Earth-orbit satellites, and corrections may be needed for orientation problems.

Other systems: intermittent satellite navigation and low-frequency radio navigation problems may occur, HF radio may be intermittent, and aurora may be been seen as low as Illinois and Oregon (typically 50° geomagnetic lat.)

S2 (Moderate)+ Solar Radiation Storm Characteristics

Biological: passengers and crew in high-flying aircraft at high latitudes may be exposed to elevated radiation risk.

Satellite operations: infrequent single-event upsets, possible noise in imaging systems, and slight reduction of efficiency in solar panel are likely.

Other systems: small effects on HF propagation through the polar regions and navigation at polar cap locations possibly affected.

Even though this was a mild storm these views of the northern hemisphere shows a significant change in the charging intensity and distribution over a 4 1/2 hour period.

Aug. 4, 2011  Important Update!

For the third day in a row, sunspot 1261 has unleashed a significant M-class solar flare. The latest blast this morning registered M9.3 and would be major event on its own – but that ain’t all!

On August 3, the sun packed a double punch, emitting a M6.0-class flare at 9:43 am EDT and a slightly stronger M9.3-class flare at 11:41 pm EDT. Both flares had significant coronal mass ejections (CMEs) associated with them that will give the Earth a glancing blow.

The newest coronal mass ejection (CME) caused by the flare  is expected to combine with one of the  earlier and slower CMEs already headed in our direction.

Not to be outdone by the sunspots, a solar wind stream flowing from the indicated coronal hole should reach Earth on Aug. 7th or 8th

Analysts at the GSFC Space Weather Lab say the combined clouds should reach the Earth in two waves as follows:

CME Arrival Time: 2011-08-05 02:56:02.0 GMT (Aug 4 – 10:56 pm edt)
Arival Time Confidence Level: ± 6 hours
Disturbance Duration: 9 hours

CME Arrival Time: 2011-08-05 13:55:10.0 GMT (Aug 5 – 11:55 am edt)
Arival Time Confidence Level: ± 6 hours
Disturbance Duration: 5 hours

The impact on Earth is likely to be major.

Coronal mass ejections (CME’s) are dynamic events in which plasma which was initially contained on closed coronal magnetic field lines is ejected into interplanetary space.

CMEs interact with the Earth’s magnetosphere and ionosphere, and are responsible for enhanced auroral activity, satellite damage, damage to ground-based electronics, disruption of communication and some power station failures. This being an unusually large event expect any or all of these annoyances.

Still being debated are the possible biological effects of being exposed to these particles for the length of time expected. Adjust according to your needs and circumstance, but don’t ignore this one.

Mass ejections create these disturbances by driving interplanetary shock waves and accelerating particles to relativistic speeds, all of which come “crashing” into the earth’s magnetic environment. There are 50 to 60 billion tons of charged particles bearing down on us.

Click here to see a NASA animation showing the 3 CMEs combining and blasting the Earth.

Click here here to see video of  CME erupting from the sun.

To see a previous Pstuph article with more information on CMEs  click here.

Sun on Aug 2 showing the alignment of three massive sunspots.

Aug. 2, 2011

A solar wind stream is currently pummeling Earth’s magnetic field and causing increased geomagnetic activity around the poles. The peak so far has been a G1-class storm that lasted for several hours around the end of July 30th.

The solar wind is the supersonic outflow into interplanetary space of plasma from the Sun’s corona, the region of the solar atmosphere beginning about 4000 km above the Sun’s visible surface and extending several solar radii into space.

There are also multiple active sunspots in play. The magnetic fields of sunspots 1261 & 1263 contain energy for powerful X-class solar flares. Double sunspot 1263 is unusually large. Its two dark cores are each wider than Earth, and the entire region stretches more than 65,000 km from end to end.

A solar flare is an explosion on the Sun that happens when energy stored in twisted magnetic fields is suddenly released. Flares produce a burst of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to x-rays and gamma-rays.

Strong Class X flares can bathe the Earth in high doses of ultraviolet radiation and X-rays, hurling huge bursts of solar wind in our direction. When these bursts arrive at our planet, the electrons and protons from the solar wind come into contact with Earth’s magnetic field, and stream toward the magnetic poles.

These types of disturbances can create geomagnetic storms in Earth’s magnetic field.

There are 3 categories scientists use to classify solar flares :

X-class flares are big; they are major events that can trigger planet-wide radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms. M-class flares are medium-sized; they can cause brief radio blackouts that affect Earth’s polar regions. Minor radiation storms sometimes follow an M-class flare. Compared to X- and M-class events, C-class flares are small with few noticeable consequences here on Earth.

A powerful flare erupted from the sun this past weekend.  The M9-class flare erupted from 1261, but was not oriented in Earth’s direction causing little effect.

Because the sunspot is now turning to face Earth, any such eruptions in the days ahead would likely effect the Earth causing communications disruptions and spectacular auroras.

This has been a busy year for the sun. To see a previous Pstuph article from April where the sun behaved in a similar manner click here.

The $1 billion cash deal gives the French state-owned company control of a Connecticut company which specializes in biometric recognition systems, passports and finger-printing as well as background checks for public and private clients.

Safran said on Tuesday it had agreed to set up a three-person proxy board to manage sensitive U.S. contracts that make up about 80 percent of L-1′s business.

The proposed proxy board would include Barbara McNamara, Deputy Director of the National Security Agency from October 1997 until June 2000, and William Schneider Jr, a former undersecretary of state under President Ronald Reagan. The presence of McNamara and Schneider is designed to ensure L-1 can keep open its lifeline of U.S. contracts while having the French government as its largest single shareholder.

The French aerospace and defense company said on Tuesday that L-1 would join Safran’s existing Morpho security business and would be renamed Morpho Trust.

Formed through the 2006 merger of Viisage, Identix, and Stamford, L-1 combines face and other biometric recognition technologies with credentialing and access control systems for protecting identity. Its main customers are  U.S. government agencies, which use its products for improving homeland security and border security.

L-1’s secure credentialing solution has been used to produce more than two billion government-issued IDs to date. These include driver’s licenses, passports and Visas, the U.S. Passport Card and Border Crossing Card, international voter registration and national ID cards, as well as the production platform for the U.S. DOD Common Access Card (CAC).

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is an inter-agency committee of the US Government that reviews transactions that could result in control of a U.S. business by a foreign person (“covered transactions”), in order to determine the effect of such transactions on the national security of the United States.

CFIUS includes representatives from 16 US departments and agencies and is chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury. Established by Gerald Ford under Executive Order 11858 in 1975, the committee gained additional authority after Ronald Reagan delegated Presidential oversight to CFIUS under Executive Order 12661 in 1988.

In February 2006, Richard Perle related to CBS News his experience on the CFIUS panel, “The committee almost never met, and when it deliberated it was usually at a fairly low bureaucratic level.” He also added, “I think it’s a bit of a joke if we were serious about scrutinizing foreign ownership and foreign control, particularly since 9/11.“

The district is outfitting all of its middle and high schools with Fujitsu PalmSecure technology that will scan a student’s unique palm vein pattern and match it to his or her meal plan.

Faster lunch lines have become a priority for schools as they contend with overcrowding or squeeze lunch periods to increase class time and boost students’ scores. That’s what happened at Boca Ciega High School, which is under state oversight after receiving a low grade.  Boca Ciega which has about 200 students eat lunch in the cafeteria each day, piloted the devices late last school year, said Art Dunham, Pinellas’s food services director.

The pressure to incorporate more fresh produce into school lunch also makes quicker lines vital, said Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokeswoman for the School Nutrition Association. “It takes longer to eat an apple, but you can slurp apple sauce more quickly,” she said.

A 2009 survey of 1,207 school districts showed that 4.4 percent used biometrics like fingerprinting, though Pratt-Heavner said she has never heard of a palm scan being used.

Pinellas students will have the option of using their 10-digit identification number rather than the scan, which is more numbers than Social Security uses to uniquely track every person born in the US.  But Dunham hopes students will become more comfortable with it.

So far, she said there have been few privacy complaints.

“Administrators’ view of it is that it sounds very sci-fi but works and does what it says it’s going to do,”  Will Geoghegan, a senior marketing manager for Fujitsu said. “Most kids are just happy they don’t have to wait in line.”

The Pinellas School Board approved a $234,000 contract on June 14 that includes nearly $80,000 for 200 of the new Fujitsu scanners and the remainder for software, upgrades and maintenance.

Jim Wayman, a biometrics expert at San Jose State University in California, said fingerprinting at schools in England has already set off a push to write a code of conduct for using biometrics with children. “But nothing has been put on paper so far,”  he said. “Pinellas County is going without established guidelines.“

At least three other school districts in Florida already have expressed interest in it, as have schools in Maine, Alaska, California and Puerto Rico.

===============================================

ADDITIONAL TECHNICAL INFORMATION FROM FUJITSU

The PalmSecure technology has been integrated into [Pinellas County Schools] existing MCS Software’s Point-of-Sale system to provide a more reliable, hygienic, accurate, and secure authentication solution that is also easier to use and maintain. The fully integrated solution combines PalmSecure biometric technology and the MCS POS system to provide enhanced security without student PINs or fingerprint scanners and replaces them with a user-friendly PalmSecure palm vein authentication solution.

All food service program transactions will be done using PalmSecure biometric technology and the MCS Software POS system. The use of palm vein biometric scanning for food service program transactions has many advantages. For example, a simple palm vein scan rapidly identifies the student, assuring the students identity thereby reducing waste and impersonation, while providing a level of reliability not found in legacy fingerprint systems which often malfunctioned or simply froze, causing repeated disruptions in the student cafeteria service.

PalmSecure technology has been deployed worldwide in a wide range of vertical markets, including security, financial, banking, healthcare, commercial enterprises and educational facilities. Additional applications include physical access control, logical access control, retail POS systems, ATMs, kiosks, time and attendance management systems, visitor ID management and other industry-specific biometric applications.

US CODE: TITLE 31   SUBTITLE IV  CHAPTER 51  SUBCHAPTER II  § 5112
Denominations, specifications, and design of coins
(k) The Secretary may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary’s discretion, may prescribe from time to time.

“Circulating coins are shipped to the Federal Reserve Banks (FRB) as needed to replenish inventory and fulfill commercial demand… Seigniorage is the difference between the face value and the gross costs of coins shipped. Seigniorage adds to the Federal Government’s cash balance, but unlike the payment of taxes or other receipts, seigniorage does not involve a transfer of financial assets from the public. Instead, it arises from the exercise of the Federal Government’s sovereign power to create money and the public’s desire to hold financial assets in the form of coins. The President’s Budget excludes seigniorage from receipts and treats it as a means of financing the national debt…” p. 28, US Mint, 2009 Annual Report

The United States doesn’t need, and shouldn’t have, a debt ceiling. The US is the only Democratic country besides Denmark with one. There is no debt limit in the Constitution. If Congress wants to cap and balance government debt, it already has a way that doesn’t risk economic chaos or a Constitutional meltdown — it’s called the annual budget.

If used routinely to close the revenue gap, such coin seigniorage would eventually reduce the national debt to zero, and remove it as an issue in US politics. In addition, the existence of platinum coin seigniorage as an option, removes the tension between the mandated debt ceiling and the 14th Amendment.

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Over 80,000 US Army troops have been trained and held ready to “respond to” civil unrest conditions in the United States. As part of this mission a massive exercise is scheduled for next month.

The Vibrant Response 12 and 12A military exercise is scheduled for Aug. 16-28 at various venues in southern Indiana and northern Kentucky.

The exercise will be the fourth field training event in the Vibrant Response series, which trains federal military forces on their role in supporting civilian consequence managers in responding to catastrophic chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear – or CBRN – incidents.

The event will be the first confirmation exercise for the 5,200-person Defense CBRN Response Force (DCRF).  They are among the more than 7,000 active and reserve Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and civilians who will train in the exercise.

The DCRF replaces the 4,500-person CBRN Consequence Management Response Force.

“We have forged a strong training partnership with the Indiana National Guard and the people who run Camp Atterbury and Muscatatuck Urban Training Complex,” said Paul Condon, Army North’s lead Vibrant Response exercise planner.

“We’ve worked with them to add several new venues at both Camp Atterbury and Muscatatuck Urban Training Complex in order to accommodate the larger DCRF,” Condon added.

Participating organizations include the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army’s 9th Area Medical Laboratory, the Fort Knox Fire Department, and National Guard elements from Indiana, California, West Virginia, Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota.

“Even Verizon Wireless will participate,” said Clark Wigley, Army North joint exercise planner.“They also are providing some of their mock equipment for the military to transport.”

The DCRF was created as part of DOD’s transformation of the nation’s tiered CBRN response enterprise. The units will assume their mission on Oct. 1 as federal military initial CBRN response forces.
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Back in September 2008, the US Army’s 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team was back in the US after spending 35 of the previous 60 months in Iraq patrolling in “full battle rattle”.

For the next 12 months, the 1st BCT was under the day-to-day control of  U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or man-made emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

This new mission marked the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.

“Right now, the response force requirement will be an enduring mission. How the [Defense Department] chooses to source that and whether or not they continue to assign them to NorthCom, that could change in the future,” said Army Col. Louis Vogler, chief of NorthCom future operations. “Now, the plan is to assign a [new] force every year.”

The 1st BCT’s soldiers learned how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it,” Cloutier said.

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets along with pepper spray and tasers.

“If we go in, we’re going in to …restore normalcy and support whatever local agencies need us to do, so it’s kind of a different role,” said Cloutier.

This new mission is part of a NorthCom and DOD response package where active-duty soldiers will be part of a force that includes elements from other military branches and dedicated National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction & Civil Support Teams.

“I don’t know what America’s overall plan is — I just know that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there are soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that are standing by to come and help if they’re called,” Cloutier added.

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10 U.S.C. (United States Code) 375

Sec. 375. Restriction on direct participation by military personnel:
The Secretary of Defense shall prescribe such regulations as may be necessary to ensure that any activity (including the provision of any equipment or facility or the assignment or detail of any personnel) under this chapter does not include or permit direct participation by a member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps in a search, seizure, arrest, or other similar activity unless participation in such activity by such member is otherwise authorized by law.

18 U.S.C. 1385

Sec. 1385. Use of Army and Air Force as posse comitatus:
Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of
Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to
execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

NOTE: The only exemption has to do with nuclear materials (18 U.S.C. 831 (e))

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This is an unusually large number of TFRs.  Previously, between March 2008 and the current period there have been only nine other Security TFRs; and those were general in nature covering Washington, DC  and airspace over large sporting events.

What is happening this week that requires these measures?

One thing stands out. Grand Forks Air Force Base is slated to receive 10 of the new Global Hawk Block 40 aircraft. Maj. Gen. Thomas Andersen, who oversees acquisition of weapons systems for the Air Force,  said the first one could arrive by July.

The Global Hawk is an unmanned reconnaissance aircraft (drone) with advanced capabilities and range.

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NOTE: The chart below was created on July 26. Please click on the FAA link to see that additional TFRs have been added to extend into August!

Sources: http://www.commerce.nd.gov/news/detail.asp?newsID=9          http://tfr.faa.gov/tfr2/list.html

http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/rq4-global-hawk-uav/

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DATE                DESCRIPTION (click on descriptions below to see full data)

The site has three General Electric boiling water reactor (BWR) nuclear generating units and is owned entirely by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

It was the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA)  first nuclear power plant, and the largest in the world when it began operation in 1974.

TVA restarted Browns Ferry Units 2 and 3 in the 1990s. As part of a long-range integrated resource planning process, TVA deferred the decision in 1995 to recover Unit 1.

In 2002, TVA completed a number of detailed studies and determined that restarting the long idled reactor was the best business decision to help meet growing demand for electricity in its service area.

In 2002, when the TVA Board decided to authorize the restart project, TVA estimated Unit 1 would have to operate between seven and eight years in order to pay back the cost of recovery.

Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant

Operating History

• Major construction on Browns Ferry began in 1967.
• Unit 1 began commercial operation on August 1, 1974.
• Unit 2 began commercial operation on March 1, 1975.
• Unit 3 began commercial operation on March 1, 1977.
• TVA shut down Browns Ferry and the rest of its nuclear fleet in 1985.
• TVA restarted units 2 and 3 in 1991 and 1995 respectively.
• TVA Board approved the restart of Unit 1 in May 2002.

TVA loses all power transmission lines in Alabama and Mississippi, Browns Ferry Nuclear plant forced into emergency shutdown

Wednesday’s storms took out all of TVA’s electric power transmission lines in Mississippi and North Alabama, and forced Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant onto diesel backup power and into emergency and automatic cold shutdown.

Bill McCollum, the chief operating officer of Tennessee Valley Authority, said it may be weeks before power can be restored to all of the 300,000 customers whose power is supplied by the federal utility.

“With the level of damage we have, it will be — we hope it will be days until we get most of the customers back on, but it will be weeks before we’ve fully repaired all of the damage,” he said.

McCollum said the reactors, now being cooled by backup diesel power, are safe. He also said the spent fuel pools also are being cooled by backup diesel power and are safe.

The transmission lines are the monster power lines that carry electricity from TVA power plants to power distributors such as EPB and Huntsville Utilities.

Now those utilities, along with a number of large industries that are wired directly to TVA transmission lines, will not have power until the lines are repaired, McCollum said.

The loss of those transmission lines also caused Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant to lose power.

When the plant generates power, it uses some of that power and the excess is sent out on the transmission lines. When those transmission lines can’t take power, it causes the reactors to trip, according to TVA officials.

The spent fuel is not as well protected as the fuel in the reactor. In Japan, the spent fuel is now open to the atmosphere in at least two plants. The danger posed by the pools is significant. A U.S. study showed that a drained spent-fuel pool delivers a lethal dose of radiation to a worker at its railing in 16 seconds.

Fuel rods in the pool are thermally hot and radioactive. They rely on water and circulation pumps to avoid reaching temperatures that melt the metal cladding around the fuel rods, a condition that releases radiation.

Browns Ferry is more vulnerable to problems with the spent-fuel pools than are the plants in Japan. Delays in constructing a storage facility for depleted fuel — planned at Yucca Mountain in Nevada — resulted in Browns Ferry and other plants stockpiling the fuel in the cooling pools.

TVA is gradually moving the spent fuel to on-site dry casks, but the pools remain near capacity. A capacity that was increased by request of the nuclear industry resulting in closer spacing of spent rods than was originally designed into the system.

That means they have more radioactive content than the pools at the Japan reactors, and they are more dependent upon electric pumps to circulate water within the cramped quarters.

“Our spent fuel pools in the reactors like the one in Japan are almost filled to the brim, and the risk from the spent fuel pools — either from an accident or from an act of malice — are about as high as you could possibly make them,” said Lochbaum, director of the nuclear safety program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, which describes itself as a watchdog group that neither supports nor opposes nuclear power.

Another issue that some experts fear will come into play in Japan involves the consequences of melting fuel rods within the reactor.

Fuel Rods

If cooling efforts fail, the fuel rods ultimately will melt into a lava-like substance. The heat would melt the steel reactor vessel, allowing the melted fuel to drop to the concrete containment vessel. In Mark I reactors, the containment vessel is concrete with steel at the edges.

“In the Mark I containment, there is a known vulnerability to containment failure known as liner melt-through,” said Ed Lyman, a physicist at Union of Concerned Scientists. “If that melt spreads to the corners, then it may be able to melt through the steel shell of the containment as it ate through the reactor vessel.”

If it happens, especially if the containment vessels are damaged as they are in Japan, “that would essentially mean large radiological release to the environment.”

McCollum said he is confident the authority’s reactors are safe, but TVA will seek to learn from the problems in Japan.

“TVA’s plants are designed, built and operated to be safe,” McCollum said. “That’s our No. 1 mission. Our plants are designed to be very robust against all types of occurrences.

“It’s far too early to assess the total impact of this,” McCollum said. “I believe we’ll have to wait to understand the facts and events as they’ve really occurred, and what actions may need to be taken and lessons to be learned out of this.”

Newly arriving data from NASA’s STEREO probes suggest that a coronal mass ejection (CME) might be heading toward Earth. The source of the cloud appears to be sunspot complex 1185-1186, which experienced an episode of magnetic instability during the early hours of April 9th and again on the 10th.

Since April 7th  the active region has hurled massive clouds into space. High latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras. NOAA forecasters estimate a 40% chance of geomagnetic activity during the next 48 hours, when a solar wind stream is expected to buffet Earth’s magnetic field.

This movie to the right shows a spherical map of the Sun as it currently appears, formed from a combination of the latest STEREO Ahead and Behind beacon images, along with an SDO/AIA image in between. The movie starts with the view of the Sun as seen from Earth, with the 0 degree meridian line in the middle. The map then rotates through 360 degrees to show the part of the Sun not visible from Earth.

STEREO consists of two space-based observatories – one ahead of Earth in its orbit, the other trailing behind. With this new pair of viewpoints, scientists are able to see the structure and evolution of solar storms as they blast from the Sun and move out through space.

There are two kinds of solar storms, often related to each other: coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and solar flares.

A flare occurs when magnetic energy builds to a peak near the Sun’s surface and explodes. This intense, fast-paced event results in an intense burst of light, including X-rays, in the Sun’s lower atmosphere.

A much larger storm, a CME erupts when magnetic field lines snap, sending billions of tons of material into space at millions of miles per hour. The cloud expands to over 30 million miles by the time it reaches Earth. Both flares and CMEs can result in additional high speed particles being shot out into the solar system at close to the speed of light.

A side-by-side comparison of the Sun from precisely two years ago (left, from SOHO) to the present (right, from Solar Dynamics Observatory) dramatically illustrates just how active the Sun has become. Viewed in two similar wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light, the Sun now sports numerous active regions that appear as lighter areas that are capable of producing solar storms. Two years ago the Sun was in a very quiet period (solar minimum). The Sun's maximum period of activity is predicted to be around 2013, so we still have quite a ways to go.

Click here to see the a composite of latest NASA LASCO C2 coronal images. Covering April 4-10, the GIF animation shows an amazing display of CME activity starting on April 7. This is a large file but worth downloading.

When the ejection is directed towards the Earth and reaches it as an interplanetary CME (ICME), the shock wave of the traveling mass of solar energetic particles causes a geomagnetic storm that may disrupt the Earth’s magnetosphere, compressing it on the day side and extending the night-side magnetic tail. When the magnetosphere reconnects on the night side, it releases power on the order of terawatt scale, which is directed back toward the Earth’s upper atmosphere.

This process can cause particularly strong auroras in large regions around Earth’s magnetic poles. These are also known as the Northern Lights (aurora borealis) in the northern hemisphere, and the Southern Lights (aurora australis) in the southern hemisphere. Aurora appear from Earth as shimmering, dancing lights in the night sky. Although green is the most common color, red and yellow hues are also observed.

A coronal mass ejection observed April 10 by the SOHO spacecraft heralds the approach of an active region to the Earthside of the sun. The source of the blast is currently located behind the sun's northeastern limb, but solar rotation will turn it in our direction in the days ahead.

Coronal mass ejections, along with solar flares of other origin, can disrupt radio transmissions and cause damage to satellites and electrical transmission line facilities, resulting in potentially massive and long-lasting power outages.

Humans in space or at high altitudes, for example, in airplanes, risk exposure to intense radiation. Short-term damage might include skin irritation. Long-term consequences might include an increased risk of developing skin cancer.

More information:

NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center

The Very Latest SOHO Satellite Images

Regional Warning Center Sweden of International Space Environment Service

Space Weather Center – For The Kids

Rice University Graphically Presented Data (technical)