CORONAL MASS EJECTION PINS THE NEEDLES ON "STEREO"

[Niri Te]

GET A LOAD OF THE TELEMETRY BELOW THE STORY


Wowwzers! Our old friend sunspot 1520 that gave us the aurora light show all the way down to Arkansas last week just produced one of the fastest moving coronal mass ejections in some time. A record 2930 km/s or 6.5 million mph! Looking at some model forecast show solar wind speeds exceeding 1400 km/s with proton densities maxed out. This is something that only occurs maybe once every 5-10 years. At this speeds it would reach earth tonight and deliver i would say easily a G4 or a violent G5 geomagnetic storm conditions. Something of this magnitude would cause a lot of disruption.

Since this occurred on the opposite side of the sun this would have no impact for us but our space satellite STEREO A would take a direct hit tonight!.

Absolutely stunning! The only impacts for us is we have a level 1 solar radiation storm (Minor).
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http://iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov/downloads/20120723_033800_anim.tim-vel.gif
iswa.gsfc.nasa.gov

[Seze Mune]

Pretty cool map!~  So, will Stereo A be fried tonight, and how will that affect us?