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Another Strong CME is On the Way – Sundiving Comet and Full-Halo CME – True Blue Moon Rise?

Wednesday, August 21, 2013 9:00
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(Before It's News)

ANOTHER CME IS ON THE WAY: As Earth passes through the wake of one CME, which did little to stir geomagnetic activity on Aug. 20th, another CME is on the way.

NOAA forecasters expect a coronal mass ejection hurled into space yesterday by an erupting magnetic filament to deliver a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field on Aug. 23rd. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.

New sunspot AR1827 has a ‘beta-gamma’ magnetic field that poses a threat for M-class solar flares.

Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni7gLC2I8Vs

 Credit: NASA/SOHO

SUNDIVING COMET AND FULL-HALO CME: A small comet plunged into the sun on August 20th. Just before it arrived, the sun expelled a magnificent full-halo CME.

In the final frames of the movie, the comet can be seen furiously vaporizing. Indeed, those were the comet’s final frames.

It did not emerge again from its flyby of the hot sun. “With a diameter of perhaps a few tens of meters, this comet was clearly far too small to survive the intense bombardment of solar radiation,” comments Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab, who studies sungrazing comets.

Occasionally, readers ask if sundiving comets can trigger solar explosions.
 
There’s no known mechanism for comets to spark solar flares. Comets are thought to be too small and fragile to destabilize the sun’s magnetic field. Plus, this comet was still millions of kilometers from the sun when the explosion unfolded.
 
The comet, R.I.P., was a member of the Kreutz family. Kreutz sungrazers are fragments from the breakup of a single giant comet many centuries ago.
 
They get their name from 19th century German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, who studied them in detail. Several Kreutz fragments pass by the sun and disintegrate every day.
 
Most, measuring less than a few meters across, are too small to see, but occasionally a bigger fragment like this one attracts attention.

TRUE BLUE MOON? Was last night’s full Moon a “Blue Moon?” 

Some observers say “yes,” but not because the Moon turned blue.

“The Full Moon of Aug. 20-21 is a ‘seasonal Blue Moon,’” explains photographer Stefano De Rosa, “because it is the third of four full moons in a single season.”
 
SpaceWeather.com
 
Read more here: http://spaceweather.com/

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