Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Hurricane Irma Winds Are Now On Track To Hit 200 MPH; There's A Coronal Mass Ejection Headed Straight At The Earth; Oh, and An Asteroid is On the Way

From WeatherBELL's Ryan Maue:
From SolarHam: 
September 5, 2017 @ 00:45 UTC M5.5 Eruption / Earth Directed CME / Radiation Storm

...UPDATE: An update regarding the M5.5 solar flare event around region 2673 this evening at 20:33 UTC. The flare was associated with a Type II radio emission with an estimated velocity of 1472 km/s, along with a 10cm radio burst (TenFlare) lasting 52 minutes and measuring 1600 solar flux units (SFU). Low energy proton levels as measured by the GOES-13 spacecraft are currently on the rise. Updated coronagraph imagery courtesy of LASCO C3 shows a coronal mass ejection (CME) leaving the sun and at least a portion of this cloud may be Earth directed. More updates to follow.

UPDATE #2 @ 00:45 UTC (Sep 5): Proton levels continue to rise following the eruption around 2673 earlier this evening. A minor (S1) radiation storm is currently in progress.
From SpaceWeather:
A SOLAR STORM IS COMING: Yesterday during a flurry of M-class eruptions, sunspot AR2673 hurled a CME toward Earth. NOAA forecasters say the cloud is likely to arrive late on Sept. 6th, causing moderately-strong G2-class geomagnetic storms with isolated periods of strong G3-class storming on Sept. 6th and 7th. Click to play a movie of the incoming storm cloud recorded by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory:...
And the bottom asteroid on the list, only discovered five years ago, will be skimming by, inside the moon's orbit, 1/10th the distance between earth and moon:

On September 5, 2017 there were 1803 potentially hazardous asteroids.
Recent & Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:
 
Asteroid
Date(UT)
Miss Distance
Velocity (km/s)
Diameter (m)
2017 QN1
2017-Aug-30
5.5 LD
10.5
17
2017 QR35
2017-Aug-30
6.4 LD
6.9
31
2017 QP2
2017-Aug-30
10.1 LD
7.5
33
2017 QQ1
2017-Aug-31
4.8 LD
10.2
39
3122
2017-Sep-01
18.5 LD
13.5
5376
2017 QT17
2017-Sep-01
17.3 LD
10
55
2017 QG18
2017-Sep-01
4.4 LD
6.6
13
2017 QV32
2017-Sep-02
12 LD
11
21
2017 QR32
2017-Sep-02
2.8 LD
18
17
2017 QB35
2017-Sep-03
0.9 LD
4.1
5
2017 RB
2017-Sep-06
3.8 LD
5.2
9
2017 OP68
2017-Sep-10
20 LD
11.7
287
2017 QK18
2017-Sep-11
14.8 LD
7.8
46
2014 RC
2017-Sep-11
15.1 LD
8.9
16
2017 PR25
2017-Sep-23
17.9 LD
13.5
241
1989 VB
2017-Sep-29
7.9 LD
6.3
408
2012 TC4
2017-Oct-12
0.1 LD
7.6
16
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