HR: 1330h
AN: SP23A-05    [Abstracts]
TI: NOAA Satellites Provide a Keen View of the Martin Luther King Solar Storm of January 2005
AU: * Wilkinson, D C
EM: Daniel.C.Wilkinson@noaa.gov
AF: NOAA, National Geophysical Data Center, E/GC2 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305 United States
AU: Allen, J H
EM: Joe.H.Allen@noaa.gov
AF: Scientific Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Physics, E/GC2 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305 United States
AB: Solar active region 0720 rotated onto the east limb on January 10th and put on a pyrotechnic display uncharacteristic for this phase of the solar cycle before disappearing beyond the west limb on January 23rd. On January 15th this region released the first of five X-class solar flares. The last of those flares, January 20th, was associated with an extraordinary ion storm whose effect reached Earth's surface. This paper highlights the record of this event made by NOAA's GOES satellites via their Space Environment Monitor (SEM) subsystems that measures X-ray, energetic particles, and the magnetic field vector at the satellite. Displays of those data are supplemented by neutron monitor data to illustrate their relationship to the January 20th Ground Level Event. GOES-12 is also equipped with the Solar X-ray Imager (SXI) that produces an image of the Sun in X-ray wavelengths once per minute. Movies created from those data perfectly illustrate the cause-and-effect relationship between intense solar activity and satellite disruptions. The flares on January 17th and 20th are closely followed by noise in the SXI telescope resulting from energetic ions penetrating SXI. Ions with sufficient velocity and atomic number can penetrate satellite components and deposit charge along their path. Sufficient charge deposition can introduce erroneous information into solid-state devices. A survey of satellites that experienced problems of this type during this event will also be presented.
UR: http://sxi.ngdc.noaa.gov/sxi_greatest.html
DE: 2118 Energetic particles, solar
DE: 2479 Solar radiation and cosmic ray effects
DE: 7519 Flares
DE: 7554 X rays, gamma rays, and neutrinos
SC: Solar Physics Division - AAS [SP]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly