CME March 7th, 2012
The sun has been very active lately! It's reaching the peak of its 11 year sunspot cycle, and therefore solar storms and flares are more prominent. You probably heard about the giant solar flare that smacked into Earth early yesterday from your favorite news channel, but there are many places on the web where you can get information that's a bit more detailed than what your news anchor says. One of my favorite places to visit is SpaceWeather.com. Here you can find all sorts of information about the sun, solar storms, solar flares and other space weather related things. It also shows you a daily picture of the sun in case you are looking to view sunspots. There's information about the speed of the solar wind and any types of flares that are headed our way. Today, the solar wind is hitting us at 296 km/s (that's 662,000 miles per hour!) You can also check the site to see when objects such as the international space station will be visible in the night sky.
