Welcome to the new Universal Day. A substorm is developing right now, but, not a big one. Clouds are clearing out over much of the state. The webcam is showing clearing over Katahdin. Any viewing will happen just at dark, and I don’t know for how long.
The GOES sun image isn’t showing a coronal hole exactly facing us, so, I’m not convinced that we’re going to see a ton of activity for a couple days.
What I do know is that we had a spike in low energy protons around 23:00 UT.
When a giant burst of plasma comes out of the sun, there are highly charged particles, and, low energy particles. The low energy protons are the smallest particles, so they travel faster, because they have less mass. If you remember high school physics and various launching experiments, this may seem familiar. It’s the same concept.
ACE/EPAM lives at LaGrange 1, about 1.5 million kilometers out there headed toward the sun. It’s an area of suspended gravity, so it’s a great place to put a rocket in orbit, because it takes less fuel, and the rocket stays where you put it.
It’s also sort of like the Last Lonely House on the way to Earth. When plasma goes by ACE, that’s when we know about it. And it takes one hour for particles to get from there, to our Ionosphere, best case scenario.
I like to think of Low Energy Protons as the smaller kernels of popcorn in a popcorn popper. The small kernels pop faster, and bounce up in the air popper faster. They are the signal that the rest of the popcorn is about to be ready.
When we see a spike in Low Energy Protons on ACE, it means we could see charged particles coming behind. Now, they don’t always behave. Sometimes, like a pony who won’t come in, off they gallop into the orchard, meaning I have to run around out there and miss writing my 8 pm forecast. But I’m here now.
Lizzie Dickerson: The Diary of a Maine Space Traveler