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Runners enjoy a sunny run at Woodbine Beach in Toronto. The sun has been sending us more than light these past few weeks and more solar flare activity may be headed our way on top of last weekend's historic geomagnetic storm.By Richard Lautens Toronto Star
The sun had the earth lined up in its sites last weekend, sparking a historic geomagnetic storm that lit up the earth’s magnetic field, bringing the northern lights down to southern Canada and even well into the United States.
And while the very active region on the sun that sparked that historic geomagnetic storm has rotated out of the earth’s view, another active region has just rotated into view.
’Not done yet!’, tweeted out the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center, which elaborated that the flare was the “largest of the solar cycle”
It didn’t effect the earth because the new active region on the sun is still far off to the side, but it will soon have earth in its sights.
We posed these nine questions to Robyn Fiori, a senior researcher and duty forecaster within the Canadian Hazards Information Service, who confirmed in a Thursday interview that “a new active region … is just starting to become visible and it let out a large X-class solar X-ray flare.”
Here are the questions:
1. The Space Weather Canada webpage indicated more solar flare activity on Wednesday?Fiori: The active region that caused all the activity last weekend is just starting to rotate off the visible part of the solar disc. And now there’s a new active region coming around from the other side that’s just starting to become visible, and it let out a large X-class solar X-ray flare.
2. Can you put X-class in perspective, big or small?Fiori: A large one. So flares are given classifications by letter. So it’s A, B, C, M and X, so X would be the biggest one.
3. And is it coming our way?Fiori: No. Because this (active area) is starting to rotate on to the visible part of the solar disc, that means that we’re only just starting to see it now. So any kind of emissions that are coming from that are going off to the side and not towards the earth.
4. Is that active region going to be eventually targeting earth?Fiori: It takes 27 days for the sun to make a rotation. So we’re able to see those active regions for a little bit less than half of that time because they’re off to the side for part of it and they’re at the back for part of it and then they’re facing us for part of it. So it’s just that part when they’re facing us that we’re really interested in.
This particular active region should be kind of at the centre of the sun, really facing the earth in the same kind of region where we had problems from the last active region (last weekend) within the next week or so.
So if it turns out to be producing a lot of flares and coronal mass ejections in the next, say, five to 10 days then we could expect that activity to impact the earth. But at the moment, we haven’t really had a really good look at that particular active region, we don’t know exactly how eruptive it’s going to be. We did have that one X-class flare Wednesday.
5. Can you explain the solar cycle?Fiori: So there’s an 11-year cycle of activity. It’s called the solar cycle. And this just means that the sun regularly goes through periods where it’s not having a lot of eruptive activity to periods where it is having a lot eruptive activity.
So the peak of the current cycle is supposed to happen later this year into next year, but that means we’re (in) a period of a few years where we’re going to see a lot more eruptive activity, a lot more big flares, and a lot more coronal mass ejections.
A few years ago, we didn’t see very many X-class flares at all, and now we’re seeing more and more of them, just because the sun is more active.
6. What about this new active region rotating into view?Fiori: We've seen a big X-class flare. It has been issuing some M-class flares as well as some C-class flares. I couldn’t tell you how many though, I haven’t looked at that this morning yet.
7. Last week’s geomagnetic storm was said to be historic, surely we couldn’t get another one so soon?Fiori: The event that we had (last) weekend – the last time we saw that level of geomagnetic activity for that length of time was back in 2003, so it’s been 20 years since we’ve seen that, so it would be unlikely that we would have the same kind of thing happen (so soon) but it’s always possible. That would be interesting from a scientific perspective and a nice opportunity to see the aurora, but it’s unlikely that we would have an event of the same scale.
8. When will the new active region on the sun be pointed directly at the earth?Fiori: It takes about two weeks for it to go from one edge of the sun to the other edge of the sun, so kind of in the five- to 10-day range from now we might expect that any kind of eruptions would have more of an earth directed component
We have to remember, too, that solar X-ray flares ... are not something that’s going to have a geomagnetic impact, it's not something that’s going to cause the northern lights.
What we’re really looking for there is a coronal mass ejection when we have an ejection of energetic particles. And not all flares have coronal flares associated with them.
9. Did that one Wednesday have a coronal mass ejection?Fiori: I think there was a small CME that came off of it, but again it wasn’t directed towards the earth.
来源链接：
https://www.toronto.com/news/not-done-yet-could-another-newly-active-region-on-sun-spark-northern-lights-sequel-for/article_3bae6f27-2807-52bd-9eb2-a7102fc8b633.html
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