Friday, January 27, 2012

Sun Unleashes X-Class Solar Flare to Salute MarketBeat's Departing Mark Gongloff

As sunspot 1402 leaves us...
X-class=the highest energy:
X-FLARE: Departing sunspot 1402 unleashed an X2-class solar flare today, Jan. 27th, at 18:37 UT. Click on the image to view a movie of the extreme ultraviolet flash recorded by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory:
Sunspot 1402 is rotating onto the far side of the sun, so the blast site was not facing Earth. Nevertheless, energetic protons accelerated by the blast are now surrounding our planet, and an intensifying S1-class radiation storm is in progress

The explosion also produced a spectacular coronal mass ejection (CME): SOHO movie. Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab say the cloud raced away from the sun at 2500 km/s or 5.6 million mph. The CME is not heading toward Earth, although it is too soon to rule out some kind of glancing blow on Jan. 28-29. Stay tuned for updates. Solar flare alerts: text, voice.
-From SpaceWeather.com

Space.Com says it was the most powerful flare of the year.

Meanwhile, over att MarketBeat:
"Well, this is it, my last post on this blog."
As I said in 2010's "We Lost a Friend Yesterday (Hint: we like reporters)":

The powers that be at the online outpost of the Wall Street Journal decided to turn out the lights on Environmental Capital.
EC was probably the best spot on the web for quick hits on matters energy/environment/policy.

We linked to it's predecessor, the WSJ's Energy Roundup on our blog's first day, Feb. 19, 2007. Three days later the site's proprietor, Mark Gongloff posted:

Blog Roll: E.Coli Edition


Toronto Star reporter Tyler Hamilton, writing in his Clean Break blog, offers a synopsis of his new story in MIT’s Technology Review about a Canadian company called CO2 Solution, which has found a way to capture carbon dioxide from power plants and factories using an enzyme extracted from genetically engineered E. coli bacteria.
Blogging
Blogs We’re Reading:
– Mark Gongloff

I was so tickled I came back with:

WSJ Energy Roundup


We got a mention in Mark Gongloff's WSJ Energy Roundup yesterday.
The reasons we linked to the Energy Roundup from our first day?

"Gongloff, a master of any medium he chooses...Energy Roundup will be a case study of the craft."
-COLUMBIA BLOGGING REVIEW

"Energy Roundup has a lot under the hood, tight and fast".
-CAR AND BLOGGER

"Energy Roundup-It's a smash, number one with a bullet!"
-BlogBillboard

"Energy Roundup is intelligent; To use a tired cliche, a must read."
-NEW YORK REVIEW OF BLOGS

"Just two weeks on the scene, Mark Gongloff's WSJ Energy Roundup is redefining what a business blog should be."
-EDITOR & BLOGGER.

Seriously Mark, thanks for the link-back.

Edited 6:34 p.m: -and Kudos to the wsj.com staff.

In addition to being the blogmaster Mr. Gongloff was Markets Editor for the online Journal. He also hung out with his pal David Gaffen who headed up the Journal's marquee blog, MarketBeat.
Here's a quick overview of MarketBeat's first two weeks.

Mark either saw a spark of something or he was bemused by our [very -ed] amateur efforts.
We scored over a dozen spots on the ER's blogroll and a couple Hat Tips, all of which helped immensely in spreading the word about Climateer Investing....MORE

As recently as August we awarded the "Line of the Day" to Mark:
Climateer Line of the Day: Meta-metaphor Edition


I've left a comment at MarketBeat that apparently didn't make it through the spam filters
Rupert, get on this!


Seriously, my first thought when a friend emailed the news was Dammit. Damn, Damn, Dammit.


First class journalism and some knowledge of music, big shoes to fill.


What was it the dolphins said in the Hitchhikers Guide?