National
Thursday, January 23, 1997

Something did, a cloud 30 million miles in diameter made up of particles ejected from the sun. And with so much notice, as many as 20 satellites and 30 ground-based observatories recorded the solar event in detail never seen before.

``This is not the first time it ever happened, and it is not the greatest solar storm ever seen,'' said NASA science spokesman Stephen Maran. ``What it is, is the first time that one of these events has been captured sort of cradle to grave.''

Everything was in position and operating in the right mode, he said. Satellites from the United States, the European Space Agency and Japan's space agency recorded the event.

Solar storms can raise havoc on Earth, to communications, to satellites, to radar, to electrical facilities. Scientists at this NASA center knew of no such drastic outcomes from this month's event.

Mauricio Peredo, a Goddard scientist, said that on Jan. 6 he was shown movies of the sun recorded that day. It was obvious, he said, that ``a coronal mass ejection'' was directed toward Earth.

On Jan. 10, NASA's SOHO and WIND spacecraft recorded the material heading toward Earth at 1 million m.p.h.

``This was not a large event by solar standards,'' said Barbara Thompson, another Goddard scientist. She said that when the information about the sun's activity was put on the Internet, she received 200 messages and calls from scientists who had spotted the activity.

The sun is at the lowest activity point in its 11-year-solar cycle. It will reach its most active phase in the 2000-2002 period.

At its inception, the outward rush of particles appears in photographs as a ring around the sun, visible because it is scattering electrons. When it reached Earth after traveling 93 million miles from the sun, the front of the bubble was 30 million miles across and deep, a swirling mass of electrons and protons.