Can APOD be more relevant please?

[watch24]

What's the deal APOD? For the last two days we see tons of pics of the big solar storm on network news, and all the commentators are all over it, but you're continuing to show one humdrum nebula shot after another. Can we be more relevant?

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What's the deal APOD? For the last two days we see tons of pics of the big solar storm on network news, and all the commentators are all over it, but you're continuing to show one humdrum nebula shot after another. Can we be more relevant?

Solar storm is a bit of a dud --
By Amy Hubbard, March 8, 2012, 8:56 a.m.

<<"The shock has arrived!" At about 5:45 a.m. Eastern time Thursday, the geomagnetic storm from a massive solar flare that rippled the surface of the sun on Tuesday night finally reached the Earth's atmosphere.

The Facebook page for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NWS Space Weather Prediction Center made the announcement. But so far, the storm has been a bit of a dud. That's good news for people who like their GPS accurate and their flights on time.

Space-weather enthusiasts monitored the storm at sites such as SpaceWeather.com, which said Thursday morning that the "impact was weaker than expected," causing only a "mild" geomagnetic storm. The site also said the storm could "intensify in the hours ahead."

The solar storm "has had no impact on the bulk power system," she said in an interview with The Times on Thursday morning. But utilities "continue their normal monitoring pattern ... for any abnormal energy flows."

Alex Young, a solar physicist at NASA Goddard, told The Times on Thursday morning that the storm was low level. It did, however, create some great auroras -- those gorgeous light displays in the sky -- as far south as the Great Lakes region, he said.

Although this solar storm fell short of predictions, you may want to brace yourself for the years ahead. Solar flare activity and its fallout on Earth are expected to heat up. We're only about four years into the current 11-year solar cycle. Young said that, around 2013, solar activity is expected to peak with “a couple of CMEs a day.” That’s coronal mass ejection – the mass of magnetized material that the sun hurls out after a flare. “But they have to be pointed at Earth. ... We would expect a couple a week to reach the Earth.”

These are unlikely to be massive geomagnetic storms. The colossal storms are expected farther into the cycle, perhaps in 2014, Young said. Large flares and their storms tend to happen as a solar cycle wanes. He likened the solar flare activity to the release of energy with earthquakes -- “a lot of small ones ... and then every so often the big one.”

With a colossal solar flare, "radio blackouts and things like that" happen fairly immediately after the flare, Young said in an earlier interview with The Times. Those geomagnetic storms and "can last six to 12 hours," Young said, "but the largest ones can last for days.">>

[Chris Peterson]

What's the deal APOD? For the last two days we see tons of pics of the big solar storm on network news, and all the commentators are all over it, but you're continuing to show one humdrum nebula shot after another. Can we be more relevant?

I don't think the APOD editors have an overwhelming mission to be "relevant". The goal is to present astronomical images that are interesting, beautiful, unusual... and at times, relating to current events. But this isn't an astronomical news site.

Let me add that what is "humdrum" to one person is likely to knock the socks off somebody else. Perhaps given your interests, APOD isn't your cup of tea. Rather than asking it to change, you might do better to find some other sites that you like better. Certainly, spaceweather.com is one of the better places to look for the latest on the local space environment.

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Venus Express suffers storm damage
The Planetary Society Blog
By Emily Lakdawalla Mar. 8, 2012

<<According to ESA, since the recent solar storm passed Venus, both of Venus Express' star trackers are suddenly unable to detect stars. Star trackers are used by spacecraft to precisely determine their orientation in space. They also have internal gyroscopes, but over time, small errors accumulate and the gyroscopes no longer provide correct orientation data. Star trackers use sightings on stars to periodically recalibrate their gyroscopes. (Even Opportunity does this, using a special neutral density solar filter on her Pancam to photograph the Sun and compare its position to where it was expected to be.)

Orientation is absolutely crucial information for a spacecraft; it's needed to point instruments at the planet, angle solar panels to the Sun, and aim radio signals at Earth. Some spacecraft can navigate using pictures of star fields taken by sensitive high-resolution cameras. But Venus Express does not have a high-resolution camera, and the one it has is designed to image Venus' bright clouds; I am not sure that it is sensitive enough to see stars.

According to a space.com article, there is reason to hope: the star trackers have "experienced similar glitches in the past," 5 to 10 times. But the "blindness" (as ESA described it) has never before lasted longer than 32 hours; at the time the report was issued this morning, the star trackers had been out of commission for 40.>>

[Beyond]

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[b][color=#0000FF]The aurora was great last night [even in the bright light of a full moon] according to photographer Chad Blakley from [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abisko]Abisko[/url] National Park, Sweden.[/color][/b]

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Solar storm hits – expected to continue through tonight
Posted on March 8, 2012 by astrobob

[b][color=#0000FF]The left image shows the CME on the Tuesday evening photographed by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. A disk blocks the blinding sun (white circle). The right image,taken early this morning, is nearly saturated with artifacts from thousands of high-energy storm particles hitting the detector. Credit: NASA/ESA[/color][/b]

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<<Like many of you, I stayed up as late as I could hoping to see aurora and then finally went to bed. The coronal mass ejection (CME) – that high-speed soup of electrons and protons shot from the sun by Wednesday’s X5.4 flare – arrived around 6 a.m. this morning. The resulting impact was not as strong as expected, but observers farther west in Alaska saw some nice auroras. The timing was a little too close to sunrise to see anything here in the Midwest.

The forecast calls for more northern lights through tonight as Earth’s protective magnetic bubble called the magnetosphere continues to reverberate from the impact. I’m happy to report that at least for Duluth, Minn., the terrestrial forecast calls for partly cloudy skies. I’ll be checking the sky regularly and report back what I see. As of 11 a.m. CST today, based on the Kp index and extent of the auroral oval, which defines the donut-shaped region of northern light visibility, sky watchers in Siberia and Lapland are probably getting a great show right now.>>

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[b][color=#0000FF]A M-class solar flare, shown in this photo taken in ultraviolet light by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, is likely to cause a strong G3 storm late tomorrow night into Sunday. Credit: NASA[/color][/b]

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_Here we go again – another solar storm, more auroras through the weekend_ Posted on March 9, 2012 by astrobob

<<Am I doomed to write about nothing but flares and auroras? Yesterday night around 11 p.m. CST, a fresh flare exploded within sunspot group 1429. This one was an M-class, a level below the X-class flares of recent days, but still powerful and headed nearly straight for Earth.

Just when you thought things were going to calm down, they’re not. Our nonstop run of lights that began in earnest yesterday look to continue through the weekend. The coronal mass ejection lofted by the new flare is expected to hit around 1 a.m. Sunday morning March 11. Expect a strong G3 storm and another round of northern lights.>>

Venus Express star trackers recovered
The Planetary Society Blog By Emily Lakdawalla Mar. 9, 2012

<<I didn't want to let the weekend go by without telling people that Venus Express' star trackers are back online; the spacecraft's blindness was, I'm very happy to report, only temporary. I got the word via Twitter and didn't find anything official on an ESA website, but here's a brief story (in Russian) from RIA Novosti, which says that ESA is now working on restoring the spacecraft to normal operations.

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[b][color=#0000FF][size=150]The Solar Storm, at Mercury: March 07, 2012[/size][/color][/b]

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<<Watch space weathering happen!

The recent solar storm had a dramatic effect on MESSENGER images of Mercury.

In this image, you can see bright streaks and speckles, with Mercury's surface faintly visible behind them. These streaks are energetic particles from the Sun hitting the camera's CCD. While great for illustrating the powerful solar event, images acquired during this period will have to be replanned for later in the mission.>>

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[b][color=#0000FF]Aurora over Faskrudsfjordur, Iceland on March 8, 2012. © Jónína Óskarsdóttir.[/color][/b]

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