[Az-Geocaching] Solar Flare

[Jim Scotti]

On Tue, 28 Oct 2003, Trisha wrote:

> In case anybody is interested, we do have a very large solar flare
> heading straight for us. It's the third largest solar flare on record,
> and erupted on Tuesday, and is expected to "arrive" at Earth mid-day
> Wednesday (tomorrow).
>
> These severe flares have the ability to disrupt satellite radio
> communications and Earth based electrical systems. (Sounds like the GPS
> may be off that day if you try to geocache....)

I'm not sure if GPS signals will be disrupted - these sorts of affects are
highly dependent on wavelength of the transmission.  But certainly there is a
chance of all sorts of different types of radio transmissions being affected.
 
> And I quote: "It's headed straight for us like a freight train." says
> John Kohl, a Harvard-Smithsonian Center of Astrophysics scientist.

It's always fun to hear the experts talk about their subject and see how the
press interprets their words - usually trying to find the most spectacular
sentence for the best sound bite.  I'm no expert on the Sun, but I did spend
some time when in high school drawing sunspots after school every day that I
could.  I'd drag my telescope out into the back yard and sketch the location
of sunspots and if they were big or unusual, I'd draw a closeup view.  Even
though I was in Seattle at the time, there was almost always a break in the
clouds that lasted long enough for me to get my sketch in and it was fun to
watch the spots march around the sun as the sun rotates.  I'd simply project
the sun's image onto a sheet of paper that I had pre-drawn circles onto and
then with my pencil, trace the locations of the spots.  It was great fun and
I probably did that for most of my senior year of high school.

> Now I am just your average joe-blow citizen when it comes to really
> technical scientific things, but to have that guy, who should really know
> LOTS about it, say it THAT WAY....I don't know....makes me nervous!
> Anybody else catch that?

For us "Landlubbers" on planet Earth, we shouldn't worry about any direct
affects of this flare.  The Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere does an
excellent job of protecting us.  I think even the two crewmen on the Space
Station are even safe since they orbit so close to the Earth that the
magnetic fields divert most of the charged particles from the sun and the
metal spacecraft walls do the rest.

> check out www.spaceweather.com and put on the OPAQUE sunscreen!!

That's an excellent website and it even mentions stuff I work on in the "Near
Earth Asteroid" section.  And, BTW, sunscreen won't protect you from the
flare products, but as I said above, you should already have plenty of
protection thanks to mother Earth....  The actual luminosity of the sun (how
much light it puts out) is not affected significantly by flares.

> Trisha "Lightning"
> Prescott

Jim.

Jim Scotti
Lunar & Planetary Laboratory
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721 USA                 http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~jscotti/