The Bastille Day Event

Posted: July 14, 2022 by oldbrew in solar system dynamics, Solar physics, atmosphere
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Some interesting solar physics here.

Spaceweather.com

July 14, 2022: When a solar storm is so strong that the Voyager spacecraft feel it at the edge of the solar system, you know it must be special. Twenty-two years ago today, July 14, 2000, the lonely travelers were on the verge of escaping space weather altogether when giant sunspot AR9077 exploded. The flare was so intense, it sent shockwaves to the very edge of the solar system.

SOHO images of the Bastille Day solar flare (left) and CME (right). The onset of snow in the images is a result of energetic protons hitting the spacecraft

Earth was on the doorstep of the blast, dubbed The “Bastille Day Event” because it coincided with the national day of France. Subatomic particles, especially protons, arrived in a ferocious wave, peppering satellites and penetrating deep into Earth’s atmosphere. Sensors on Earth’s surface registered a rare GLE–a “ground-level event.”

“People flying in commercial…

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  1. oldbrew says:

    A new article from The Royal Astronomical Society:
    Space weather will delay your trains

    Fluctuations in space weather are disrupting train signals and causing significant delays. A project investigating the effect of solar storms on railway signals will be presented this week at the National Astronomy Meeting (NAM 2022) by Cameron Patterson, a PhD student at Lancaster University.

    The sun’s tendency to affect technology on Earth, as well as in space, is known as space weather. In railways, electric currents caused to flow in the earth by solar activity can interfere with the normal operation of signals, turning green signals to red even when there is no train nearby.

    Patterson says: “Most of us have at one point heard the dreaded words: ‘your train is delayed due to a signalling failure’, and while we usually connect these faults to rain, snow and leaves on the line, you may not have considered that the Sun can also cause railway signals to malfunction.”
    . . .
    Interestingly, the results suggest that signalling failures can occur even with moderate storms.

    https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/space-weather-will-delay-your-trains