As Seen by SDO: The Carrington-Class CME of 2012
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- Visualizations by:
- Tom Bridgman
- View full credits
While SDO did not have a direct view of the region which launched the large coronal mass ejection (CME) of July 23, 2012, it still managed to catch a glimpse of the solar plasma as it launched into space.
The eruption becomes visible at timestamp 02:14:24 UTC in the lower right side of the movies below.
For More Information
See Science@NASA
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, the SDO Science Team, and the Virtual Solar Observatory.
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Animator
- Tom Bridgman (Global Science and Technology, Inc.) [Lead]
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Scientist
- Joe Gurman (NASA/GSFC)
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Producer
- Scott Wiessinger (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
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Project support
- Ian Jones (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Datasets used in this visualization
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SDO AIA 304 (304 Filter)
ID: 677This dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/
See all pages that use this dataset -
SDO AIA 193 (193 Filter)
ID: 679This dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/
See all pages that use this dataset -
SDO AIA 171 (171 Filter)
ID: 680This dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/
See all pages that use this dataset -
SDO AIA 131 (131 Filter)
ID: 730This dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/
See all pages that use this dataset
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.
Related Pages
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ID: 11558 Produced Video
NASA's Many Views of a Massive CME
Read moreOn July 23, 2012, a massive cloud of solar material erupted off the sun's right side, zooming out into space. It soon passed one of NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, or STEREO, spacecraft, which clocked the CME as traveling between 1,800 and 2,200 miles per second as it left the sun. This was the fastest CME ever observed by STEREO. Two other observatories – NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and the joint European Space Agency/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory — witnessed the eruption as well. The July 2012 CME didn't move toward Earth, but watching an unusually strong CME like this gives scientists an opportunity to observe how these events originate and travel through space. STEREO's unique viewpoint from the sides of the sun combined with the other two observatories watching from closer to Earth helped scientists create models of the entire July 2012 event. They learned that an earlier, smaller CME helped clear the path for the larger event, thus contributing to its unusual speed. Such data helps advance our understanding of what causes CMEs and improves modeling of similar CMEs that could be Earth-directed. ||
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ID: 4167 Visualization
The Big CME that Missed Earth
Read moreJuly of 2012 witnessed the eruption of a very large and fast solar coronal mass ejection (CME) (see NASA STEREO Observes One of the Fastest CMEs On Record and Carrington-class CME Narrowly Misses Earth ). While not directed at Earth, it was sufficiently large that it could have seriously disrupted the global electrical infrastructure. The event did impact STEREO-A of NASA's heliophysics fleet which provided a host of measurements (see Sentinels of the Heliosphere).One of the conditions which contributed to the high speed of this event is that two smaller CMEs were launched a little earlier, and these events cleared out much of the solar wind material, leaving little to slow the outflow of the July 23 event (UTC).In the visualizations below, generated from the Enlil space weather model, green represents particle density, usually protons and other ions. In green, we see the Parker spiral moving out from the sun generated by the sun's current sheet (Wikipedia). Red represents particles at high temperatures and shows the CME is hotter than the usual solar wind flow. Large changes in density are represented in blue. These three colors sometimes combine to tell us more about the characteristics of the event (noted in the 3-color Venn diagram below).However, if this CME had struck Earth's magnetosphere, which has a much stronger magnetic field, the changing magnetic field would induce much larger voltages in systems with long electrical conductors, such as power lines that run over long distances. These significantly higher voltages can damage power transformers. ||
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ID: 4177 Visualization
As Seen by STEREO-A: The Carrington-Class CME of 2012
Read moreSTEREO-A, at a position along Earth's orbit where it has an unobstructed view of the far side of the Sun, could clearly observe possibly the most powerful coronal mass ejection (CME) of solar cyle 24 on July 23, 2012. The visualizations on this page cover the entire day.We see the flare erupt in the lower right quadrant of the solar disk from a large active region. The material is launched into space in a direction towards STEREO-A. This creates the ring-like 'halo' CME visible in the STEREO-A coronagraph, COR-2 (blue circular image).As the CME expands beyond the field of view of the COR-2 imager, the high energy particles reach STEREO-A, creating the snow-like noise in the image. The particles also strike the HI-2 imager (blue square) brightening the image.The HI-1 imager has had 'bloom removal' enabled and filled with contents of the immediately previous HI-1 image, which creates a linear artifact above and below bright stars and planets. ||
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ID: 4178 Visualization
As Seen by STEREO-B: The Carrington-Class CME of 2012
Read moreLike SDO, STEREO-B did not have a direct view of the coronal mass ejection (CME) launched by the sun on July 23, 2012. However, the active region involved was very close to the limb of the sun (lower left quadrant) and STEREO-B provided an excellent view of plasma launched in both ultraviolet light and the white-light coronagraph. ||
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