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…
Got a bit sidetracked earlier in the month, this is overdue for an update. Earlier we reported that Hathaway had updated his solar cycle prediction saying “…the predicted size makes this the smallest sunspot cycle in about 100 years. “. April solar index numbers seem to support this prediction. All three main solar indexes tracked…
Sunspot AR1476 may have some surprises for us in the coming days, and I hope it isn’t a Carrington type event. It has already launched two CME’s yesterday. From NASA’s Spaceweather.com: A pair of solar eruptions on May 7th hurled coronal masss ejections (CMEs) toward Earth. Forecast tracks prepared by analysts at the Goddard Space Weather…
Readers may recall my reports on the CME’s from massive sunspot group 1429, seen below. It seems the sunspot group continues to live, and has unleashed another massive Coronal Mass Ejection. It will rotate into Earth view again soon.