A Little Solar Activity

On A Snowy Day

It’s May 1st. Time for flowers and birds singing and all the lovely northern hemisphere things that we associate with spring. Except for where I live. Here, it’s snowing. A blizzard. Two days ago it was nearly 80° F.  So, it’s springtime where I live — with a twist.

Also, it’s media day here at TheSpaceWriter’s Ramblings. I thought I’d start with a great video of the Sun, fresh off the solar surface! Things are rockin’ and rollin’ as usual, with a BIG twist.  Check out this video from the Solar Dynamics Observatory, taken earlier today, of a huge coronal mass ejection.

The event as shown here is about two hours and forty minutes long and the ejection was not directed toward Earth. But, imagine if it had been!  We’d be getting ready for incredible auroral displays, and possibly even facing problems for ISS astronauts, satellites, and power grids as a swarm of charged particles swept through our region of the solar system.  Our Sun is a powerful lady, and every once in a while, she gives an incredible show of strength!

Want to know more about what effect the Sun can have on Earth and our technology? Check out the series called Space Weather FX, a project we worked on with MIT’s Haystack Observatory.  It’s a great outreach and classroom tool to teach about “living with a star” and was funded by an education and outreach grant from NASA.

Since it IS the first of May, it’s also time for Our Night Sky a project I create in collaboration with Astrocast.TV each month. It’s a short little introduction to the night sky, showing the Moon, planets (when visible), and a few introductory constellations for both northern and southern hemisphere observers in a four-minute-long format. I understand that the video gets used in classrooms and in a couple of observatories for visitors, so if you’re interested in displaying it in an exhibit, use the Contact Us form on the Astrocast.TV site and let the producer know what you want to do.  Happy viewing and, get out there and do some stargazing this month! (Weather permitting.)