Field notes

The Sun sheds a magnetized plasma that typically arrives at Earth at 350–450 km/s. When the interplanetary magnetic field turns southward (negative Bz in GSM coordinates), it reconnects with Earth’s field on the dayside. Energy then stores in the magnetotail and can dump into the ionosphere as auroral currents and a planetary Kp disturbance.

Kp is a 0–9 three-hour index of that disturbance. NOAA’s G-scale is simply Kp relabeled for operations: G1 begins at Kp 5. F10.7 (10.7 cm radio flux) tracks the longer solar-cycle background that sets ionospheric density, independent of any single storm.

None of this is controversial. It is the daily work of space weather. Telluric shows the L1 solar wind, GOES X-rays, and Kp because they are the established chain from Sun to ground.

Lightning strokes continuously excite the spherical cavity between Earth’s surface and the ionosphere. The cavity rings at a fundamental near 7.83 Hz and at harmonics near 14.3, 20.8, 27.3, and 33.8 Hz — the Schumann resonances. Peak frequencies and Q shift slightly with ionospheric height, which itself responds to solar UV and geomagnetic storms.

The spectrogram on the observatory is a model of that cavity, not a live ELF station. Amplitude is nudged by the current Kp so the display breathes with geomagnetic conditions. A true magnetometer in the 0–40 Hz band would be better; until one is wired in, the modes are shown honestly as a physical sketch.

Solid-Earth tides from the Moon and Sun are real and routinely measured. Stress changes are on the order of kilopascals — small compared with tectonic stressing rates, but not zero. Spring-tide geometry (syzygy: new or full moon) is the strongest astronomical tide. Telluric reports Sun–Moon elongation for that reason, not as a forecast.

Planetary alignments change the solar system’s barycenter by tiny amounts and have been hypothesized, repeatedly, as modulators of solar activity and even of large earthquakes. Some statistical studies report weak periodicities; many do not replicate. There is no accepted predictive skill.

The orrery therefore shows where the planets actually are, and flags conjunctions inside 8°, as geometry — a clock, not an alarm. Seismic energy on the map is Kanamori’s relation E = 10^(1.5 Mw + 4.8) joules, summed over the USGS feed. That number is a measurement of what already happened.