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The sun has spat out two clouds of plasma in the past two days, which might trigger beautiful aurora displays observable much farther south than usual. The two coronal mass ejections (CMEs), eruptions of charged particles from the sun's upper atmosphere known as the corona, burst from the sun on Aug. 14 and 15 respectively, according to the U.K. forecaster Met Office (opens in new tab). As the CMEs cross the 900,000-mile (150 million kilometers) distance between the star and our planet, they might cannibalize each other, according to SpaceWeather.com (opens in new tab), creating a single super powerful CME....

STEVE (short for "strong thermal velocity enhancement") is a long, thin line of hot gas that slices through the sky for hundreds of miles. The hot air inside STEVE can blaze at more than 5,500 degrees Fahrenheit (3,000 degrees Celsius) and move roughly 500 times faster than the air on each side of it, satellite observations have shown. Whereas the northern lights occur when charged solar particles bash into molecules in Earth's upper atmosphere, STEVE appears much lower in the sky, in a region called the subauroral zone. That likely means solar particles aren't directly responsible for STEVE, Live Science...

The spot is so big it's changing the way the sun vibrates, according to spaceweather.com. If the dark spot hurls a blob of plasma at Earth, it could disrupt our magnetic field, affecting GPS and communication satellites orbiting close to Earth as well as airplane navigation systems. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center issued a forecast for an unsettled geomagnetic field around Earth on Aug. 6 and 7, which could means auroras, though whether it becomes a full-blown solar storm is not yet clear. The telltale vibrational changes showed up in a helioseismic map near...

It has been a busy time for solar activity. Back in March of 2022, Earth was hit by separate geomagnetic storms, according to government weather agencies in the U.S. and the U.K. Though the geomagnetic storms likely didn't cause any harm, they brought into focus the potential harm that could come from more powerful storms in the future. Then earlier this month, a G1-class geomagnetic storm hit the Earth, causing bright auroras over Canada. The only problem is that nobody saw this storm coming until it was quite late. Five days ago, a giant sunspot and filaments on the solar...

Sun AR3038 Composite image of the Sun’s surface on 6/21/22. AR3038 can be seen in the upper right. Credit: NOAA’s Space Weather Forecast Office Sunspots are usually not a cause for concern, even if they double in size overnight and grow to be twice the size of the Earth itself. That’s exactly what happened with Active Region 3038 (AR3038), a sunspot that happens to be facing Earth and could emit some minor solar flares. While there’s no reason to worry, it does mean a potentially exciting event could happen – spectacular auroras. Although astrophysicists consistently point out that sunspots like...

Gov. Ron DeSantis once again swept a straw poll for 2024 presidential candidates at a Colorado conservative conference Saturday, beating out former former President Donald Trump and other possible contenders. The attendees of the Western Conservative Summit, organized by the Centennial Institute, a think tank associated with Colorado Christian University, approved of a potential DeSantis candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination at 71%, with Trump coming in at 67%. The straw poll was conducted based on an "approval" system, which allowed attendees to vote for more than one candidate that they could support. DeSantis won the 2024 straw poll last...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) bested former President Trump for the second year in a row in a 2024 presidential election straw poll conducted Saturday. The poll was taken at the Western Conservative Summit in Aurora, Colo …

Amplified aurora displays are possible if a coronal mass ejection of charged particles emerges from the "mixed-up" sunspot AR3006, which pointed its flaring blast toward Earth Tuesday (May 10) at 9:55 a.m. EDT (1355 GMT). The flare was caught on camera by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and spurred a radio emission alert by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), amid a reported shortwave radio blackout in the Atlantic Ocean region. AR3006's polarity is the reverse of what scientists are expecting, which makes the sunspot "interesting and dangerous," SpaceWeather.com stated. (Sunspot polarity is governed by the current solar cycle.) "If...

HOME SPACE NEWS Sun Blasts Out 3 Powerful Bursts of Energy in Last 24 Hours TOPICS:NASASolar Dynamics ObservatorySolar FlareSun By NASA MAY 4, 2022 NASA SDO Solar Flare May 4 2022 NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare – as seen in the bright flash in the center of the image – on May 4, 2022. The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares, and which is colorized in yellow. Credit: NASA/SDO In the last 24 hours, the sun emitted two M-class solar flares and one X-class...

On Sunday, a strong shortwave radio blackout occurred over southeast Asia and Australia due to a solar flare hurled from the sun. Seems like Solar activity is again picking up pace after a geomagnetic storm hit earth. It is interrupted that the sun is likely to erupt with more flares this week. The X1 class flare was accompanied by a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) from a cluster of active sunspots that have produced significant flaring prior to appearing on the eastern limb of the sun. CMEs are huge bubbles of radiation and particles from the sun. They explode into space...

A solar storm will sweep across the Earth Wednesday night, raising prospects of dazzling Northern Lights visible as far south as Chicago while prompting airlines and electric-grid operators to step up monitoring of the potentially damaging geomagnetic activity. Solar eruptions—called coronal mass ejections—burst from the sun in two waves Monday and are building up enough energy to potentially become a level 3 geomagnetic storm when it hits, according to Rob Steenburgh, a space scientist with the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center. Solar storms, like hurricanes, are ranked on a five-step scale, with one being the weakest and five the strongest....

Composite image of solar prominence on 31 August 2012. (NASA/SDO/GSFC) The dazzling northern lights could light up the skies as far south as the northern United States after the detection of 17 solar eruptions blasting from a single sunspot, two of which are headed straight to Earth. The two Earth-directed eruptions have merged into a "cannibal coronal mass ejection" and are barreling toward us at 1,881,263 miles per hour (3,027,599 kilometers per hour). When it crashes into the Earth's magnetic field on the night of March 30, the result will be a powerful G3 geomagnetic storm, according to The National...

A powerful solar storm is set to hit Earth on Thursday (March 31) with spectacular aurora displays accompanying it after the sun fired nearly 20 flares from a single sunspot in just two days. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warned that two coronal mass ejections (CMEs), spat out from the overactive sunspot AR2975, on Monday (March 28), are heading toward our planet and might trigger a geomagnetic storm rated as G3 on NOAA's five-point scale.

The Sun is continuing its rowdy behavior, with flares and coronal mass ejections almost every day since mid-January. That means the inevitable has happened: some of those eruptions have blasted in the general direction of Earth, which means we're in for some solar storms. The Space Weather Prediction Center of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the British Met Office have both issued advisories for mild and moderate geomagnetic storms over the next couple of days. That doesn't mean we have anything to worry about; in fact, we've already been hit by mild and moderate geomagnetic storms...

The flare is expected to produce geomagnetic storms when it hits our planet late on Sunday or early Monday morning, making it possible to spot the spectacular sight – and cloud cover is forecast as relatively minimal overnight, making it even easier to catch the light show. ...satellite images showed the flare – also known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME – leaving the sun on Saturday. “The large CME has been analysed and is expected to have an Earth directed component, which is expected to arrive either late on March 13 or early March 14.” ...could interfere with...

Daniel Ruelas, a 16-year-old Hispanic man, faces 16 counts of attempted murder in a shooting that injured six Aurora Central High School students on November 15 in Nome Park. Investigators note that the shooting appears to have been the result of a conflict between students belonging to some type of gang. Ruelas was charged in the 18th Judicial District Court with 16 counts of attempted murder in the first degree; three counts of assault in the first degree; one charge of possession of a firearm by a minor and other charges including use of a deadly weapon and causing serious...

Elon Musk's satellite internet service Starlink just got dealt an expensive blow — the company's currently estimating that 40 of the 49 Starlink satellites it launched on February 3rd will be destroyed because of a geomagnetic storm. The storm caused "up to 50 percent higher drag than during previous launches," keeping the deployed satellites from reaching their proper orbit around the Earth.

One person was killed and two others were wounded in an Aurora, Colorado, church shooting Friday night just after 8 p.m. The Denver Post reported that the incident occurred at the Iglesia Faro De Luz Church in Aurora, located at 538 N. Olathe Street.

AURORA, CO – Losing a child is difficult, regardless of age. Often grieving families turn not only to legal recourse, but also civil lawsuits against those responsible. However, in a case out of Colorado, the grieving family who lost their teenager who fell out of a stolen vehicle which ran him over is seeking civil relief from the victim of the car theft. The incident when the teenager was killed occurred on October 18th in Aurora, Colorado at Village Green Park. The Aurora Police Department reports that 14-year-old Kashontez Grigler was riding as a passenger in a van which was...

Monday's CME, which burst from the sun at 6:36 a.m. EST (1136 GMT), is expected to reach Earth on Thursday (Dec. 23). It stemmed from a powerful M1.9-class solar flare that erupted from a sunspot called Active Region 2908, according to Spaceweather.com. "The auroral oval is likely to be slightly enhanced at high latitudes from the 22nd to 24th due to coronal hole geomagnetic activity enhancement, and the chance of a weak coronal mass ejection arriving on the 23rd," the Met Office wrote on its website. According to the European Space Agency's (ESA) Space Weather Network, the sun has been...