Hey there, my polar fools! 🍺 Cassandra is here with fresh news straight from the space weather kitchen, as hot as borovička after the third round!
NOAA SWPC (you know, those Americans who guard the Sun like I guard the last bottle of Tatranský čaj in the fridge) have issued a warning of a G2-level geomagnetic storm, right for this Friday, October 9th. The reason? On Monday, October 6th, around 07 UTC, the Sun cleared its throat properly and released a weaker, but fairly wide coronal mass ejection (CME for short, so we can sound scientific over a beer 🍻).
## What exactly did the Sun fire off, and why should you care
This ejection is linked to an M1.4-class solar flare, which erupted from active region number 4549. It's a medium-spicy flare, not an apocalypse, more like having a shot of pálenka instead of beer - you feel it, but it won't kill you 😅🔥.
According to the European SIDC, this cloud of charged particles is flying through space at a speed of roughly 560 km/s. For comparison, that's about as if you flew from Bratislava to Košice faster than you'd manage to finish your beer at the pub by the road 🚀🍺.
From the images of the LASCO C2 coronagraph (that's a kind of space camera that watches the Sun non-stop, better than the camera system in front of my apartment), we can see that part of this ejection is heading straight for Earth. And since the math of the universe is sometimes surprisingly precise, the expected arrival on October 9th makes perfect sense 🎯.
## Will there be aurora in Slovakia too?
Now to the most important part, my dear aurora-hungry friends 🌠. A minor geomagnetic storm (G1) is almost a sure thing, you can calmly write that down in your calendar right next to payday. But that stronger G2 level? I wouldn't bet my whole paycheck on borovička for that one, because the ejection's speed is quite slow, and the universe sometimes likes to disappoint like a flat beer at a concert.
Nevertheless, my dear night owls, I recommend staying alert on Friday! 👀✨ When this plasma cloud reaches Earth, you never know what might happen. Maybe the sky will light up in green and purple colors like a nineties disco, and you could be right there to see it, ideally with a beer in hand and buddies on blankets by Šírava 🏕️🍻.
So don't forget to follow ziara.sk so you don't miss a thing, because I'll be reporting every single pulse from the Sun before you can even say "coronal mass ejection" after your third beer 😂🚀.
Your Astronomer Cassandra ✨
