Daily Suspicious0bserver's Weather Post:
October 27, 2014
What's in the sky tonight?
October 27, 2014
-AR2192 is the biggest sunspot in nearly 25 years, and it is still growing. The active region now covers 2750 millionths of the solar disk, an area equivalent to 33 planet Earths skinned and spread out flat. It is so large that sky watchers are seeing it with the naked eye when the sun is dimmed by low-hanging clouds or, in this case, dense fog. Barry Freas took the picture on October 26th from Red Hill, Kentucky. "It was a very foggy morning," he says. "AR2192 was remarkable."
Big sunspots tend to produce strong flares, and AR2192 is no exception. It is crackling with magnetic activity. In the past three days alone it has unleashed 3 X-class flares and 8 M-flares. The most intense of these flares have caused HF radio blackouts and other communication disturbances on the dayside of Earth.
Usually, strong flares are accompanied by massive CMEs--billion-ton clouds of electrified gas that billow away from the blast site. So far, however, none of the eruptions from AR2192 has produced a major CME. Without a series of CMEs to hit Earth and rattle our planet's magnetic field, there have been no geomagnetic storms nor any widespread auroras.
Astro Picture of the Day:
October 27, 2014
Source:
What's that in front of the Sun? The closest object is an airplane, visible just below the Sun's center and caught purely by chance. Next out are numerous clouds in Earth's atmosphere, creating a series of darkened horizontal streaks. Farther out is Earth's Moon, seen as the large dark circular bite on the upper right. Just above the airplane and just below the Sun's surface are sunspots. The main sunspot group captured here, AR 2192, is one of the largest ever recorded and has been crackling and bursting with flares since it came around the edge of the Sun early last week. Taken last Thursday, this show of solar silhouettes was unfortunately short-lived. Within a few seconds the plane flew away. Within a few minutes the clouds drifted off. Within a few hours the partial solar eclipse of the Sun by the Moon was over. Only the sunspot group remains, but within a few more days even AR 2192 will disappear around the edge of the Sun. Fortunately, when it comes to the Sun, even unexpected alignments are surprisingly frequent.