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OftenBen · 3729 days ago · link · · parent · post: Major X-Class Solar Flare, Prepare For Auroral Activity
Neat! So can we track these things in real time(or close to, because lightspeed lag) as they go from the sun to the earth? Or is that a projection based off of what we observed on the sun when it was detected?
am_Unition · 3728 days ago · link ·
The latter. We can't really "see" the plasma in between the time it leaves the corona and arrives here. One of our best tools is the ACE spacecraft, which orbits around Lagrangian Point 1, about an hour upstream of us (under typical solar wind speed conditions). For a storm, we'll see it coming about 20 minutes before it hits the magnetosphere, but then it takes about another hour to propagate back through the magnetotail and send ions slamming down into the polar atmosphere... then voila, aurora.