WIREDGOV

A series of solar flares have been gripping the nation's interest as the sun enters a period of increased activity. Solar Stormwatchers are just some of the enthusiasts who have been keeping an eye on the large explosions in the sun's atmosphere as they release intense bursts of radiation.

The Solar Stormwatch project (link opens in a new window) allows members of the public to use images from the NASA STEREO (link opens in a new window) to spot the explosions from the sun and the resulting clouds of particles as they make their way towards the earth. These particles, at their most disruptive, can cause communications to fail and lead to cuts to power supplies.

Professor Richard Harrison, Solar physicist and Principal Investigator for STEREO said; "We've just witnessed the brightest flares seen for four years. This was a series of so-called X-class flares - the highest category on the solar flare 'Richter scale'. The flares were near the centre of the Sun which means associated eruptions and clouds of solar particles can travel in our direction."

Dr Chris Davis, STEREO Project Scientist and leading scientist in Solar Stormwatch talks further about these latest developments.

The impact on on Earth depends on how the clouds of particles disrupt our magnetic field. The clouds themselves are magnetised and the direction of their magnetic fields and the speed they travel determines the type of impact.  If their magnetic fields turn southward (opposite to the direction of the Earth's magnetic field) and their speed over the Earth exceeds 700 km per second, then we might expect some disruption - this is also the time to look out for aurora!

You can find out more by looking at the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (link opens in a new window) website.

Here you can see the space environment in front of the Earth in real time - as measured using NASA's ACE (link opens in a new window) spacecraft. The areas to watch are the charts on the left and right hand side of page. The chart on the left shows significant activity when the dials reach the yellow or red areas; the Auroral map on the right of the page shows increased activity when areas of the map become more red.

There is also more on Lancaster University's Aurora watch (link opens in a new window) website.

More information can be found on STFC's (link opens in a new window) and NASA's (link opens in a new window) STEREO pages.

More information about The Solar Dynamics Observatory can be found on STFC's SDO pages (link opens in a new window) and NASA's SDO pages (link opens in a new window).