posted on Feb, 28 2010 @ 01:55 PM
There is a
NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center that give alert, etc via email. I had join the list a couple of
years ago and it wasn't until recently I saw the first data coming from that system and probably the source data for that widget.
I thought it was be cool to get some kind of warning if we are getting bombarded by x-rays or radiation from the sun, but after looking closer it
seems there is only a 8 minute delay from something happening on sun until it reaches earth, which is not much advanced notice. The notification
system only updates every 5 minutes and the delay thru email probably make the actual notification much shorter.
The reason I had become interested with this data was the disturbance of FM radio at certain times thru the solar cycle. Unfortunately I was not able
to correlate the timing of the disturbance with the periods of heavy solar activity.
I've been looking at the space weather data for a couple of months now, and the number of sunspots has dropped off to near zero recently. The
prediction is sunsport activity will increase thru the end of cycle 24.