kenyatta:

Massive solar flare should be hitting us right about… now (Tuesday evening 1/24/2012).

via Ethan at ScienceBlogs:

Our Sun, early yesterday morning, had a relatively powerful Solar Flare, at class M8.7. (M is the second highest class, behind only X.) While it’s nothing compared to the biggest ones we’ve recently seen, Solar Flares can occasionally spell trouble for us here on Earth.

This Solar Flare produced a CME directed towards Earth, and since it’s moving at around a whopping 1,000 miles per second, that means it’s arriving… right around… NOW!

A coronal mass ejection is when this heated plasma stream of electrons, protons, and heavy ions gets launched out of the Sun in a random direction in space. This charged radiation can totally do some damage to electronics but you are fine.

And this bit about the coming aurorae:

Anyone with clear skies in the Northern Hemisphere should go and look for them tonight; we don’t know how far South they’ll be visible, but even places that very rarely get aurorae might be in luck tonight!

Read the rest at Starts With A Bang