Dear surprised reader,
I missed my usual late Tuesday spot, due to being under the weather (I’m fine now). I decided to skip this week and newsletter the hell out of you next week… but who can resist a quick story about a Cannibal CME?1
Yes, I’m referring to our solarpalooza season at the moment… the sun is putting on an exciting show for us, making this solar maximum of solar cycle 25 rather memorable.
According to spaceweather.com:
Multiple CMEs are heading for Earth. A new NOAA forecast model suggests that three of them could merge to form a potent "Cannibal CME." Cannibal CMEs form when fast-moving CMEs overtake slower CMEs in front of them. Internal shock waves created by such CME collisions do an good job sparking geomagnetic storms when they strike Earth's magnetic field. Indeed, NOAA is now predicting a severe storm on May 11th when the Cannibal arrives.
Cannibal sun energy! The universe continues to amaze me, even if it might knock out some of our radio transmissions (and perhaps affect satelites).
NOAA has predicted a G4 geomatnetic storm, so get outdoors this weekend during the evening because if there’s no cloud cover you might witness some glorious Northern Lights.
It’s unlikely this is the end of things, since sunspot AR3664 has rapidly grown and is now 15 times wider than Earth itself. It has reached a similar size to the sunspot that caused the Carrington Event back in 18592.
Expect more CMEs in our future!
I’ll mention another piece of astronomy news that caught my attention, partly because I am amused by its lack of mythic knowledge.
Space.com announced that ‘Citizen scientists find remarkable exoplanet, name it after Harry Potter character’. Thanks to the the ordinary people who are part of the Planet Hunters TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) programme we have an exciting find:
The planet, which is around three times the size of Earth, orbits TOI 4633 A, a sun-sized star in a binary system located around 309 light-years from Earth. The world also happens to sit in that star's habitable zone, a region with temperatures neither too hot nor too cold to allow liquid water to exist, hence its other moniker: The "Goldilocks zone."
And what was the chosen name? Pervical — ‘after the father of Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts’.
No doubt that fictional father was named Pervical, but if you appreciate mythology prior to the 1990s, you’ll know that Pervical (Perceval, Parzival, Parsifal, Peredur ) is better known as a Knight of King Arthur’s Court, and was first established by the French author Chrétien de Troyes in Perceval, the Story of the Grail (circa 1182-1190).
Pervical is the original knight who quests for the Grail, an important spiritual artefact, which was tied into an older concept that the health of the sovereign reflected the health of the land. When the ruler sickened, the land fell fallow. Usually, only a mystical cure would resolve the problem. Thus a hero would be appointed, to face perilous trials until earning the essential insight: being unafraid to ask the central question, ‘Whom does the grail serve?’
Thinking upon it, the Planet Hunters are modern knights, dedicating their free time to quest on behalf of scientists by combing through data and hoping to glimpse a world with shining potential.
Percival is a sound name for a planet discovered from pure intentions.3
For those new to this newsletter, I’ve an amateur love of astronomy, and discuss it irregularly, although the sun’s antics this year have resulted in more coverage. A CME is a coronal mass ejection, and happens when a sunspot eject plasma and coronal material into space, sometimes in Earth’s direction. Our planet’s magnetosphere protects us against these solar projectiles, mostly.
I explained the Carrington Event in a newsletter in February.
Space.com reports that the programme’s ‘43,000 volunteers from 90 countries have helped astronomers catalog around 25 million objects so far.’
Much like me, you're always looking up at the sky in AWE and WONDER and I think that's a great way to be. It makes me realize I'm in so much more of something BIGGER that the little things don't necessarily melt away but sometimes it helps make it all much more manageable.
Glad you're feeling better! ❤️😊