Earth will be hit by a new solar outburst on Wednesday and Thursday that could trigger geomagnetic storms, researchers said. Just a week ago, the Sun erupted violently towards Earth, triggering a similar moderate geomagnetic storm.
According to a tweet from the Centre for Excellence in Space Science (CESS), a division of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, on February 6, an eruption of filaments was observed on the sun south of the center of the disk. The eruption was recorded by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. (SOHO) Mission’s Large-Angle and Spectroscopic Coronagraph (LASCO), CESS said.
SOHO is a joint mission to study the sun launched by NASA and the European Space Agency in 1995. It usually identifies coronal mass ejections.
CESS further stated that from February 9 (05:48 ET) to February 10 (09:53 ET), the Earth will be affected by moderate geomagnetic storms ranging from 451-615 kilometers per second, quite From February 9th to February 10th at 3:23pm IST at 11.18am IST.
“This impact is unlikely to be very dangerous. Moderate geomagnetic storms are likely,” CESS further tweeted.
Solar storms can also trigger geomagnetic activity that makes the Northern Lights visible.
According to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), geomagnetic storms are a major disturbance in Earth’s magnetosphere, when the energy of the solar wind is very efficiently exchanged into the space environment around Earth will happen.
These storms – triggered by powerful bursts of radiation called solar flares – can disrupt some high-frequency radio broadcasts and low-frequency navigation. They also make significant changes to currents, plasmas and fields in Earth’s magnetosphere.
The solar wind conditions that are effective for generating geomagnetic storms are sustained (hours to hours) cycles of high-velocity solar wind.
What is a coronal mass ejection (CME)?
This is a large discharge of plasma and magnetic fields in the sun’s corona. CMEs travel outward from the sun at speeds below 250 kilometers per second (km/s) to nearly 3,000 km/s. The fastest Earth-directed CME can reach our planet in as little as 15-18 hours. Slower CMEs may take days to arrive.
Complete News Source : Hindustan Times
