Batten the hatches!

[XMEN Gambit]

<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/10/2 ... <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>The sun burped. Big time. And now a big cloud of charged particles is heading right for us. Due Wednesday or Thursday.<br>This is an X18-level storm. There have been only three flares that hit the record high of X20, and I'm not sure if any of those hit the earth.<br><br>What does it mean to you? Well, it depends on how the magnetic fields of the CME align with those of the Earth. It could be a big, ugly thing that knocks out power and communications, or it might hardly be noticable. We'll see when it gets here, as the guy in the article said. <p></p><i></i>

[XMEN Ashaman DTM]

If you go to <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/2003_10_28/" target="top">the SOHO website</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> then you can see a video of what the sun sent out. The initial burst was a huge mass of protons travelling at 1/2 the speed of light. They hit the SOHO camera lenses and heavily distorted the image. The rest of the burst (the part called the coronal mass ejection) is travelling at just over 2100 km/s, and should arrive at 3am EASTERN tonight.<br><br>Find a place with clear skies and look north. There is a VERY good chance that you'll be able to see the associated auroras from the event for most of the parts of the US. If you live on the west coast, head for the mountains and plan to get up there by about midnight.<br><br>The expected arrival times quoted in the article are UTC, which is the time in england.<br><br>*edit - added link* <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub141.ezboard.com/bxmenclan.sho ... ambit>XMEN Gambit</A>&nbsp; <IMG HEIGHT=10 WIDTH=10 SRC="http://www.xmenclan.org/images/x.gif" BORDER=0> at: 10/28/03 5:38 pm<br></i>