Telescope spots solar tsunami

National Solar Observatory ^ | Dec 7, 2006

[burzum]

Dec. 7, 2006: The prototype of a new solar patrol telescope in New Mexico recorded a tsunami-like shock wave rolling across the visible face of the Sun following a major flare even on Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2006, at 18:28 Universal Time (11:28 MST). The shock wave, known as a Moreton wave, also destroyed or compressed two filaments of cool gas at opposite sides of the solar hemisphere.

"These large scale 'blast' waves occur infrequently, however, are very powerful. They quickly propagate in a matter of minutes covering the whole Sun, sweeping away filamentary material," said Dr. K. S. Balasubramaniam, of the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Sunspot, NM, who is studying these and other phenomena. "It is unusual to see such powerful waves encompassing the whole sun from ground based observatories. Its significance comes from the fact that these waves are occurring near solar minimum, when intense activity is yet to pick up."

[burzum]

Check out one of the videos (the last one is the best):

video 1 (animated gif)
video 2
video 3

Spaceweather.com is also covering this.

[neverdem]

thanks, bfl

[Lurker]

Don't know if this is up your alley, but here it is anyway.

L

[Reform4Bush]

Bush's fault

[SunkenCiv]

Ping-a-roonie-toonie.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Burzum for the topic, Lurker for the ping; and passing it along...

[Fred Nerks]

thanks, Like WOW!

[Kozak]

We can do the same on a smaller scale with a few B 52's....

[zeugma]

Excellent vids. APOD had a good vid of a flare a couple of days ago.

[COEXERJ145]

The Karl Rove Solar Flare and Global Warming Machine^tm is working again after a software glitch last month.

[Lokibob]

bttt

[TheTruthAintPretty]

Another reminder of why we need to have a backup plan for a "Y2K-style" meltdown of our electronic infrastructure.

All it takes is one major solar belch to put us back in the horse and buggy days. Yet there are ostriches promoting the "cashless" society, leaving us vulnerable to massive solar events, blackouts, and just plain old-fashion hacking.

During the great blackout of '03...I had green in pocket, so while others were flat broke, unable to fill their tanks even at the gas stations that HAD power, because their cards could not process, I was filling the jugs and firing up the generator.

[FDNYRHEROES]

Watch Slick Willy trying to glom some money & fame off this tsunami as well...

[raybbr]

The amount of energy in that wave must be enormous. If only we could run a jumper wire to the sun.

[Molly Pitcher]

Ping

[SunTzuWu]

Bump for later reading.