Plot of AR1520 X1.4 Flare
Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab have revised their forecast for CME from AR1520 X-flare the cloud’s expected arrival time to 09:17 UT (5:17 am EDT) on Saturday, July 14th. Weekend auroras are likely. Aurora watchers could get a good show. Sunspot AR1520 unleashed an X1.4-class solar flare on July 12th at 1653 UT. The sunspot was directly facing Earth therefore we are expecting this to be a geo-effecting CME. As you can see from spike the Xray Flux plot this was a significant event.
Potential Impacts: Area of impact consists of large portions of the sunlit side of Earth, strongest at the sub-solar point.
Radio – Wide area blackout of HF (high frequency) radio communication for about an hour.
SUMMARY:
Begin Time: 2012 Jul 12 1537 UTC
Maximum Time: 2012 Jul 12 1649 UTC
End Time: 2012 Jul 12 1730 UTC
X-ray Class: X1.4
Optical Class: 2b
Location: S15W01
NOAA Scale: R3 – Strong
**Update**
Here is video footage of AR1520.
See though, uilkne Global Warming, there is at least a kernel of truth behind the solar storms one, because it’s happened before and was actually recorded. IIRC, Russia got hit with one a long while back, and our East Coast did, too. It shorted out the power systems in Virginia? Augh. I can’t really remember.That still doesn’t change the fact that this sounds largely hysterical. If anything, we should be worried about the astronauts up in space right now a solar flare would greatly increase the radiation they would receive in space