Posted on 05/08/2012 10:44:06 AM PDT by Kartographer
An enormous sunspot group has taken shape on the surface of the sun, hinting that our star may soon start spouting off some powerful storms.
The huge sunspot complex, known as AR 1476, rotated into Earth's view over the weekend. It measures more than 60,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) across, researchers said. Scientists with NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory mission, a space-based telescope watching the sun, dubbed the solar structure a "monster sunspot" in a Twitter announcement.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear
Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right"
Got any ides on when it gonna hit
I think .. well .... we're all gonna' die.
Yup .. that's it ... we're all gonna' die.
Maybe it’s a tumor.
In my service career, I was a telecommunications controller. In the early 70s I was working long-haul HF (5K miles plus), VHF communications with a smattering of UHF and EHF stuff.
We had a SIDs one day (Sudden Ionospheric Disturbance) which sponged out hop/skip communications using the ionosphere...totally dead!....the higher frequencies came back first but it hit everything from HF up to UHF. Lasted about 30 minutes. We were told the sunspot cycle came every 11 years....
From the gist of things lately, the bombarding of the ionosphere this time might be much more dramatic...hard to tell what’s gonna happen. While the higher frequencies might not be affected so much, attenuation may be increased. Systems like GPS and/or DBS who don’t have all that much signal margin might marginalize or be affected moreso.....
In any case, we shall see what we shall see.
The Global Warmists are hard at work producing a report that will blame Republicans driving SUVs for the sunspot.
Ref: #1476 at left of photo: one big mother sunspot group.
CQ CQ CQ DX.
/johnny

It's nawda toomah!
Iss nota tumuh!
See, the sky really is falling!
Dinosaur gas expulsion is the root cause of this. The gases took a long time to reach the sun.
My solar cells always seem to show a significant increase in electricity produced during these events.
Jovian SUVs driven by Space lizard Republicans are responsible for all the Sun’s issues...
1476 is a big group, but there are not many others, across the face of the sun. Seems like this cycle is still pretty thin for sunspots overall.
Get ready for a lot of Earth songs.
Everyone is urged to look up the Carrington Event of 1859. Just for a laugh.
Back then, all we had were telegraphs. There is no telling what would happen from such a powerful solar storm today, with all our smart phones, onboard vehicle computers, satellites, the Internet and a rickety power grid.
Intellectual curiosity ... no prepper stuff today. Just sayin’ ...
Every household should have stored 1 gallon water per person per day for a minimum of two weeks.
Dumb question...is this the end of the current “Maunder Minimum”?
From what I’ve seen, the present sunspot cycle has been particularly short-lived and weak, and may presage an extended period of solar quiescence (i.e. - a “minimum” period, which may have already begun).
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