Sun shoots a fastball at Earth, but minimal impact expected

by **Sporadic** Sat Jan 21, 2012 8:40 am

A huge sunspot unleashed a blob of charged plasma Thursday that space weather watchers predict will blast past the Earth on Sunday. Satellite operators and power companies are keeping a close eye on the incoming cloud, which could distort the Earth’s magnetic field and disrupt radio communications, especially at higher latitudes.

The front edge of the burst should arrive Sunday morning, said Joseph Kunches, a spokesman for the Space Weather Prediction Center, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colo.

“At first glance, it was, ‘Oh my God, it’s at the center of the [sun’s] disk, it ought to go right to the Earth,’ ” Kunches said. But upon further review and “head-scratching” Thursday, NOAA’s space weather team calculated that most of the plasma blob should pass harmlessly over the top of our planet.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/sun-shoots-a-fastball-at-earth-but-minimal-impact-expected-on-satellites-power-grid/2012/01/20/gIQA5KiBEQ_story.html

Sun shoots a fastball at Earth, but minimal impact expected M3Flare_combo

Sun shoots a fastball at Earth, but minimal impact expected M3Flare_combo

Courtesy of NASA - Combined images from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellites show a giant blob of plasma (top) ejected by the sun on Thursday. The cloud of charged gas is expected to reach Earth Sunday.