Skywatchers should be on alert for possible geomagnetic storms this week that may trigger colorful displays of auroras.
Today on April 11th at 7:16 UT (3:16 am ET) a large, Earth- facing group of sunspots hurled a massive cloud of plasma and charged particles into space. Heading towards our planet at high speed, the Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) was first spotted by NASA’s sun-monitoring satellite , the Solar Dynamics Observatory, and is expected to slam into Earth’s protective magnetic field sometime in the early morning hours of April 13th.
According to Spaceweather.com, the front of the storm is already being felt in the form of space radiation (energized protons) speeding by Earth. The high influx of charged particles buffeting the magnetic field can potentially pose a hazard to everything from GPS signals, polar radio communications, power grids and circuit boards on orbiting satellites.
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/04/11/solar-storm-heading-towards-earth/
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