ST (Solar Topic): Solar activity continues; add'l info sought

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According to the "Solar Terrestrial Activity Report" site, new activity seems to be brewing up. So far, that site has been one of my favored places to check periodically. The "IPS Real-Time Space Weather Status Panel" from IPS Radio and Space Services of Australia is another site I've found myself tracking regularly.

I seem to have developed the expectation that NASA isn't going to tell us much of anything major until after the fact. Which parrots this administration's practices in other areas, of course.

My problem and frustration in tracking this Solar Max period of events is one of understanding what the terminology means, and thus of understanding what it means to me in my life. And yes, I have begin to realize that even a layman's comprehension is not going to be achieved rapidly.

The Univ. of Michigan page "Space Weather: Basic Facts About Space Weather" has offered a set of visuals depicting space weather and its effects upon Earth.

"Sigmoids And CMEs -- FAQ" from the Univ. Of Montana is a good laymans description of what those things (CMEs) are. On that page, "Geomagnetic Storms and Impacts on Power Systems" from Minnesota Public Power was very interesting, by the way.

"The Diverse Effects Of Solar Events" from IPS is another basic reference page I found useful.

"NOAA Space Weather Scales" lays out the scales for geomagnetic storms, radiation storms, and radio blackout events.

On a recent post to this board (last weekend? couldn't find it -- sorry!), someone posted a series of links, including one to "Moscow Neutron Monitor - Links". Haven't even begun to wade through all of those links!

The thread "OT- Solar stuff- how to protect equipment?" from Feb 20th had several interesting discussions. Among them, dragonslayer made the statement that "This solar maximum is doing things the scientists have never seen before, in a bigger and far more frequent way than ever before. Anyone who thinks this is "solar cycle as normal" has not been following what has been happening on the sun everyweek for the last couple of years. There are NASA scientists and others who quite frankly don't know what the sun might do in the next 4 months, but they are worried. " I'd sure like to see elaboration of that line of thought.

This is a technical-field layman talking, and asking if anyone has additional suggestions of where I might read up. Also of what I and we might especially watch for. Succinct tutorials would also be most welcome!

-- redeye in ohio (not@work.com), February 23, 2000

Answers

Try Mitch Battros's (sp?) site. He has been into this in a BIG way for quite some time now. VERY layman. He has a new message board up now too.

http://www.earthchangesTV.com

-- Alice (Looking@glass.com), February 23, 2000.


Don't forget "Todays Space Weather" at:

http://sec.noaa.gov/today.html

and the great MPGs of the Sun at

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mpeg/

The C2 images are really good at showing flare material being ejected from the sun. You can see the CME's in near real time. (or at least before they get here 96 hours later)

Enjoy

-- Helium (HeliumAvid@yahoo.com), February 23, 2000.


There's a great article in the March 2000 issue of either _Sky & Telescope_ or possibly it was _Astronomy_. Sorry, I subscribe to both and tend to confuse them. Probably S&T. The article discusses the effects of Coronal Mass Ejections and similar solar phenomena on the power grid, radio transmission, and satellites. For me, best part of the article is a color photograph of the massive physical damage to a power grid component-- a melted transformer--caused by the sun in the 1989 Canadian blackout. Induced voltage, I imagine.

No URL to give, you'll have to surf over to that old-fashioned device, a printed magazine. Large newstands may carry S&T, so you can peak at the picture; be nice and buy the magazine rather than standing there and reading it!

As far as predicting solar effects on the earth, this is a very hard thing to do indeed. You are being unfair I think to the hard-working scientists of NASA and other agencies and universities. (The @#$%^&# NASA bureaucrats are another matter, let's not go there...)

One reason is the distance involved: the sun is alot further from the earth in angular terms than most people imagine (ask a local planetarium or astronomy club about the exercise "The Earth as a Peppercorn": our planet is a pretty small angular target relative to the distance from us to Sol). When we are talking about "focused" events like CMEs, it is hard to tell early in an event whether the stream of particles is going to hit us. Additional space-weather satellites would help, as noted in an earlier article somewhere on TB2000.

The earth is partly protected by our magnetic field: this is why solarmax problems tend to happen at higher latitudes, although this isn't always the case. The magnetic flux lines come down to the surface at the magnetic poles (the northern mag pole is in Canada). That's related to why the 1989 blackout happened in Canada and not, say, Costa Rica! Of course, most of the most directly tech-dependent populations of the world are concentrated at higher latitudes: Europe and the northern part of eastern and western North America.

Ramblings from an amateur astronomer (Dobson rules!!!),

--Andre in southcentral Pennsylvania

-- Andre Weltman (72320.1066@compuserve.com), February 23, 2000.


Alice and Helium, thank you!

Andre, 'that old-fashioned device, a printed magazine'? What are those? . Actually I have a family member who usually hits our local library at the end of the week and snarf's up magazines of family interest. Got her to add amateur radio mag.s recently. Perhaps she can find this one also!

I had not thought about the angular target considerations that you brought up. And me occasionally enjoying things that go bang, target lead, etc. -- oh, well... Thanks, of course!

So, when a full-halo CME is observed, even given that that plasma cloud is pretty huge by our terms, there is no way to immediately calculate its exact vector. My guess would be that, once the earth moves enough in its orbit for the halo effect to dissipate, there is no way to spot that plasma cloud nor to track it. Until it impacts a certain satellite in a geostationary (?) orbit 1/2 way between the Earth and the Sun. Thus, until the CME plasma cloud is at least 1/2 way here (48 hours away, plus or minus), there is no way to tell whether it will miss the earth, nick us, or whether it's head-for-the-caves time.

I had no intent to be unfair to hardworking scientists of either NASA nor of universities, I assure you. I am with you on the NASA bureaurat opinion -- that's what my comment on that point spoke to.

OK, what the heck is the 'Dobson rules' reference?!

Thank you for your thoughts and for your time! Learning, sloooowly...!

-- redeye in ohio (not@work.com), February 23, 2000.


See also www.spaceweather.com A little easier to understand and it has predictions for the next 24-48 hours.

Space weather



-- slza (slzattas@erols.com), February 23, 2000.



Based on www.spaceweather.com, a Class M is a medium solar flare event and a Class X is a severe solar flare event. See link for near term predictions.

-- slza (slzattas@erols.com), February 23, 2000.

redeye in ohio,

John Dobson is a famous contemporary telescope maker who pioneered and popularized a simple way of making telescope mirrors and especially mounting amateur telescopes: the so-called "Dobsonian" mount for Newtonian 'scopes is very popular. (How about this: Isaac Newton rules!!!)

Basically, the Dobson design allows easy motion of the scope to view different parts of the sky and follow objects as they "move" through the heavens; it does not require careful alignment with the north celestial pole as some designs do.

We have a commercially made 8-inch Dobsonian telescope. Some day my wife hopes to grind her own 12.5-inch mirror and mount it in a homemade scope. Mirror grinding is not as hard as you might expect. Dobson claims an experienced telescope mirror maker can produce them at the rate of "an inch per hour" (i.e. 12 hours or so of work for my wife's planned 'scope if she had ever done one before--in reality, we expect it to take ALOT longer when she does it. Dobson has probably done a few thousand and can do it a little faster, I expect.) The only part of my wife's project to be done commercially is the application of a reflective coating on the front surface of the glass, in a vacuum chamber. (Couldn't quite justify getting a vacuum chamber as part of our Y2K preps...)

Cheers, --Andre in southcentral Pennsylvania

-- Andre Weltman (72320.1066@compuserve.com), February 23, 2000.


Again, thank you all for your links and information!

Andre, there are times that I wish I had sufficient free hours to pursue avocations such and yours andyour wife's. Haven't been near astromony since Scouting days (don't ask how far back...).

Again, thank you for your insights nd abservations, and thank you for the time it took to formulate them so well!

-- redeye in ohio (not@work.com), February 23, 2000.


Hi Redeye,
a "sightings" type page is www.cyberspaceorbit.com.
a Gopher site :Link
One more snapshot composite I like: First Light
If you have a fast connection the gallery at ACE is great:Link.
(~ 100 MB of stuff)
The realtime part can give the most warning of all the birds we can access on the web.

-- Possible Impact (posim@hotmail.com), February 23, 2000.

Here is part of an email I sent to Holly Deyo today - I am not Catholic, and I am not predicting anything, still.....

Also, Mitch Battros site is mentioned in this thread, and I just started to read it in the last week or two - but Keith Rowland, for those of you who know who he is, does not seem to think highly of MB or his site - so beware!

Here is part of the post to Holly,

By the way, I think I am the first person (at least that I have heard of) to make the connection between between the present Pope and the prophecies of St. Malachy. St. Mal was an Irish monk born around the year 1094 A.D. He is credited with composing a symbolic list identifying all the one hundred and eleven Popes that he forsaw as holding the Holy See from 1143 on. Each Pope is represented by a symbolic name and cryptic tag in Latin. Not all of them have hit the mark of course, but several were right on. Several years ago, when I first read the list I couldn't make the tie in to the present Pope, and obviously neither could anyone else I read that mentioned St. Malachy. But now it is rather interesting, for those of us who have been following the actions of the Sun over the last few years. St. Malachy's Latin tag for the present Pope is "De Labore Solis" which means roughly, "something to do with the labour of the sun". Interesting, yes? sincerely, d

-- dragonslayer (i like to worry@whattheheck.com), February 23, 2000.



Possible Impact,

Your .cyberspaceorbit looks very interesting from the few minutes I just spent on it. You can bet I'll be spending some more time there! Your other suggestions I will follow up on when I have a faster link than I do right now (12:05 AM EST 2-24). Thank you!

dragonslayer,

I caught your reference to Holly Deyo (of the Noah's Millenium Ark 1999-2000 site, "Link", with interest. That is a site that I found very rich both for information ranging from solar through earthquakes, and for thought-provoking articles and their newsletters. It's also a site I've not seen spoken of hereabouts, at least not recently. Perhaps obviously, it was in that site that I found IPS of Australia.

I am not Catholic either; born-again comes a lot closer in my own mind. Nonetheless, I want to consider the topic of your quoted message when I'm a little more awake.

Now, perhaps I'll go delve into cyberspaceorbit a bit more before crashing -- if for no other reason than for the delicious graphics!

Again, to all of you who have responded to my innitial request, please accept my sincere appreciation.

As I have said before, this 'place' continues to amaze me, not the least of which is by the amazing breadth and depth of knowledge accounted for by so many who post and lurk here!

-- redeye in ohio (not@work.com), February 24, 2000.


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