Winter Solstice

Giant Sun Eruption Captured in NASA Video*

Today's Winter Solstice was a bit uneventful on this typical bleak late-December day. Raining in Portland, blizzards in the Midwest and heavy snow in the eastern U.S. are all seasonal events which block the sun while all the other news distracts our attention from the sun's important day. 

The ancients built special structures to catch a glimpse of the sun on this darkest day of the year.  They realized the awesome life power of this great majestic star in our sky.  They knew, as we do also, that this day has always been about the sun. They sensed the mysterious nature of this great energy source that causes all life on the Earth to flourish.

                                 Newgrange in Ireland, built approximately 6,000 years ago,
                       welcomes the sun's alignment at exactly its longest point of the year.**

But this season's solstice reveals a surly sun, as stormy in sun power as the Midwest is in snow power, curling, swaggering and staggering tall fiery plumes into the solar system.  

"Although it didn't unleash a killer solar flare or devastating coronal mass ejection, but it is undergoing a fascinating period in its solar cycle," according to NASA which finds the sun's activity especially interesting.

"As can be seen from the SDO image above, the solar magnetic field is twisted and warped, channeling million-degree plasma high into the sun's atmosphere in the form of beautiful coronal loops. This is all because the sun is fast approaching "solar maximum" -- an exciting time when the sun's magnetic field is most stressed.

"We can expect a lot more flares and CMEs from now and through 2013; although these events can damage satellites and threaten power supplies, they're not the flares described in doomsday myth."

Sometimes we take it all for granted - the sun, the moon, the stars and life itself here on Earth.  But, it's all an amazing synchronization of creative power, moving in a kind of cosmic choreography. The storms predicted on the sun in 2013 may mean some flare effects here - maybe some satellite systems will not work, or phone calls will drop, but seeing the sun this late into the year makes me happy that we're beginning to return to shorter days until finally we can bask in the sun on a beautiful beach in July. It's all wonderful and perfect,  this great powerful radiance up there.

*The sun as seen through the SDO's 171A filter. Credit: NASA/SDO

**http://www.mythicalireland.com/astronomy/ancientastronomers.html