July 23 2012 AR11520 Parting Shot & The Wizard Takes Flight HD

  
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A coronal mass ejection (CME) blasted away from the sun this morning with rare speed: 2930 km/s or 6.5 million mph. CMEs moving this fast occur only once every ~5 to 10 years. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory recorded the cloud's emergence on July 23rd starting around 0300 UT:

The source of the CME was sunspot AR1520, which sparked many bright auroras earlier this month when it was on the Earth side of the sun. Now, however, the active region is transiting the sun's farside so this blast was not geoeffective. One can only imagine the geomagnetic storms such a fast CME could produce if it were heading our way. Stay tuned for additional analysis.

According to a forecast track prepared by analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab, this CME will miss all of the solar system's inner planets.

Thank you for watching and have a very enjoyable week.

Sorry for the delay. We had a nasty thunderstorm and loss of connection to tower.