May produce a dangerous X-class flare that could directly impact Earth Steve Davidson writes: Right now, today, one of the largest sunspot groups of Cycle 24 – AR1890 – is pointing nearly strait at Earth. AR1890 has already produced a large X-class Level 3 solar flare Monday. from Spaceweather.com: X3-CLASS SOLAR FLARE: Earth-orbiting satellites have…
Above: note the four separate events in the last two days – from the WUWT Solar Page (From NASA’s Spaceweather.com) When the week began, the sun hadn’t unleashed an X-flare all year long. In only two days, sunspot AR1748 has produced four. The latest X-flare from this active sunspot occured on May 15th at 0152…
I loathe having to write this story because I truly dislike giving any attention to the people who are known as the “slayers” from the “Slaying the Sky Dragon” book. They now operate under the moniker of “Principia Scientific”. But, somebody has to do it because some really bad mangling of the intent of a…
NOAA SWPC has updated their plot page of solar metrics, and the slump continues. At spaceweather.com Dr. Tony Phillips writes: SO THIS IS SOLAR MAXIMUM? Forecasters have long expected the Solar Max of 2013 to be the weakest of the Space Age. It might be even weaker than they thought. As shown in this 20-year…
Large sunspot Group AR1520, seen below just right of center, was pointed directly at Earth when the flare occurred. The GOES Xray Flux spike hit X 1.4, just barely an X-class:
Source: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_4096_4500.jpg A couple of people have noticed (as did I) that the sun is essentially blank.
From Spaceweather.com NOAA forecasters estimate a 75% chance of M-class solar flares and a 20% chance of X-flares during the next 24 hours. Any eruptions are likely to be geoeffective because the source, sunspot AR1476, is directly facing our planet. Yesterday, May 10th, amateur astronomer David Maidment of Sohar, Oman caught the active region in…
