PROPAGATION: SUN EMITS LARGE CME ON JANUARY 13
A huge sun eruption on Sunday January 13th at 07:24 GMT unleashed a wave of solar plasma aimed at Earth that may amplify the planet's northern lights displays and possibly cause difficulty in High Frequency radio communications. Amateur Radio Newslines Stephan Kinford, N8WB, has the latest:
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The solar eruption, called a coronal mass ejection or CME was expected to take about three days to reach Earth bringing it in sometime between midday Wednesday the 16th and when this newscast goes to air. The good news is that scientists say that this particular event is not strong enough to interfere with satellites on-orbit or electrical systems on Earth.
Observations from NASA's twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory or STEREO spacecraft showed that the CME moved away from sun at speeds of 275 miles per second. This equates to about 990,000 miles per hour.
NASA officials said that solar eruptions at this speed are fairly typical and have not caused substantial geomagnetic storms in the past. They explain that geomagnetic storms occur when the charged solar particles interact with the Earth's magnetic field. At that point they hold the potential to cause problems for satellites in space, communications systems , and terrestrial power grids.
Two particularly active sunspot regions, called AR 11652 and AR 11654, have produced four low-level M-class flares since January 11th. NASA says that the sun is in an active phase of Solar Cycle 24 and is expected to reach its peak sometime this year.
The bottom line is that should you find the High Frequency bands kind of dead for a few days you might want to switch to 6 or 2 meters and beam North. When these solar storms hit, you never know what signals you might hear through Auroral Propagation.
For the Amateur Radio Newsline, Im Stephan Kinford, N8WB, in Wadsworth, Ohio.
