Solar storm

[SariTimur]

I looked for posts on this but couldn’t find anything. Therefore I thought I would ask. With the forecast of tonight’s severe solar storm is anybody expecting any side effects to boats other than possible GPS and radio comm problems?

[wholybee]

Originally Posted by SariTimur

I looked for posts on this but couldn’t find anything. Therefore I thought I would ask. With the forecast of tonight’s severe solar storm is anybody expecting any side effects to boats other than possible GPS and radio comm problems?

No. It will probably be completely unnoticed except for the news coverage.

[HankOnthewater]

Here is a space weather forecast of Oz.
https://www.sws.bom.gov.au/?ref=ftr
I can't determine how to adjust my sails though

I got more detailed warnings yesterday for my work. But I have not seen any effects, but... I was not on my boat.

[Wotname]

We had a strong Aurora this morning around 6 am (GMT +10) in Southern Tasmania.

[JPA Cate]

Originally Posted by Wotname

We had a strong Aurora this morning around 6 am (GMT +10) in Southern Tasmania.

Funny, that. We had fog again. We get the alerts, and usually they are cloud alerts.

Glad you could enjoy it, Wottie.

Ann

[Wotname]

^^ we were lucky this time, we were above today's fog line; we aren't always so lucky!

[skipperpete]

I got the BOM alert as I was sitting in the departure lounge in Singapore,…… now landed at Tullamarine. I wondered if we were in for an aurora viewing but unfortunately the Dreamliner windows were all in dark hue, too dark to see if anything was happening. Probably the smoothest flight I’ve been on in a very long time.

[JPA Cate]

In case someone is interested, there are some beautiful photos here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-...arth/103834604 ....from Australia and all over the world.

Ann

[CaptTom]

We had some aurora last night up here in the other hemisphere. First time I've ever seen them. We're at around 43N. It happened here once before, probably over 25 years ago, and I missed it that time. Usually it's cloudy on those rare nights when the aurora are forecast.

We didn't see the curtains of light like on the time-lapse videos you see on TV. More like high, thin clouds glowing a bit. Also, the horizon to the N seemed much brighter than normal, not sure if that's just local light pollution or aurora. I'll have to go back on another dark night and see if it's the same.

One New Hampshire (next state over from me here in Maine) media outlet has some pictures their viewers posted:
https://www.wmur.com/article/new-ham...ights/60762253

Edit: A Maine station did the same:
https://wgme.com/news/local/gallery-...roras-borealis

I think sometimes the long-exposure photos look better than real life, although these are pretty close to what we saw.

[senormechanico]

We had a bit of Aurora at 48N.
Last time we had any significant here was about 20 years ago.

[Antsjh]

We had aurora here in NY (40 degrees) but had to wait until 3:45 am edt for skies to clear. Mostly purple greenish cloudlike glow with a little flickering and all concentrated near northern horizon.

[dfelsent]

East coast USA 42°30’ N

[phorvati]

Starlink was down this morning

[fxykty]

We’re just south of the equator so no aurora for us, but certainly played havoc with our Starlink connection. Still worked, but frequent 1-5 second dropouts. Starlink displayed a message in their app apologising for network disruptions and saying that their staff is working on resolving the issues. Not sure what a human could do to stop a solar storm?

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by phorvati

Starlink was down this morning

Starlink, warned, on Saturday, of a “degraded service”, as the Earth is battered by the biggest geomagnetic storm, due to solar activity, in two decades.
Musk said earlier, in a post on ‘X’, that Starlink satellites were under a lot of pressure, due to the geomagnetic storm, but were holding up so far.

Elon Musk on ‘X’ ➥ https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1789173902289338518


More about geomagnetic storms & satellites:

“Now we know how a solar storm took out a fleet of Starlinks” ~ by Carolyn Collins Petersen, April 2023
➥ https://phys.org/news/2023-04-solar-...starlinks.html

“The Solar Cause of the 2022 February 3 Geomagnetic Storm that Led to the Demise of the Starlink Satellites” ~ by Nat Gopalswamy, Hong Xie, Seiji Yashiro, Sachiko Akiyama, March 2023
➥ https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.02330