Keith Strong@drkstrong·6h

ALERT: Note the dark area just east of Sun center. It is a coronal hole (open magnetic field) and is at the optimum latitude to interact with the Earth (near the equator). As it rotates to the west it may bathe the Earth in high-speed solar wind causing another geomagnetic storm!

CME WATCH - 2023.04.25: New in the last 24 hours: Looks like 3 off the NE limb accompanied by a continuous outflow of plasma from that area. Then a faint but large, slow one off the SW limb.

Keith Strong@drkstrong·1h

THE SUN TODAY: Very  quiet.

1) SSN up to 95, area 505 mil.

2) No significant flares (>C5) in the last day

3) New regions coming over the NE limb.

4) Lost several major regions in the last 2 days, 4 new numbered regions and a host of tiny new spots (white) emerging which may grow.

Keith Strong@drkstrong·7h

Did I just say there were signs of life on the Sun? No sooner said than done - an M1.9 flare from AR3288 near sun center. If it produced a CME, we could be in for another geomagnetic storm.

Keith Strong@drkstrong·Apr 29

THE SUN TODAY:  NOAA's daily events files are not being kept up to date, so report is incomplete. Too much snow in Colorado? 1) Sunspot area increased to 860 mil. We had an M2 yesterday (see previous tweet) and a couple of C flares today. One newly numbered region and 3 new ones.

Apr 29
April 2023 Sunspot Movie: Note how spot groups emerge, stretch out and decay away.

Apr 29
April 2023 Solar Magnetic Field: The magnetogram video seems a lot busier than the sunspot movie. The areas are larger than the sunspots and there seems to be more regions. Not all magnetic regions produce sunspots and even after the spots have gone the magnetic field remains.

April 2023 Solar UV Continuum Movie: This channel is a combination of the sunspot and magentic movies. You can clearly see the spots and the bright areas surrounding them (plage) which correspond to the magnetic fields. Occasionally there will be brightenings - those are flares.

APRIL 2023 Transition Region movie: These data are taken in He II 304A light which corresponds to a temperature of about 50,000K! The dark areas on the disk are filaments but when on the limb they are prominences. They can erupt violently causing geomagnetic storms.

Keith Strong@drkstrong·3h

CME WATCH - 2023.04.29: Lots of missing data. After the CMEs we saw in yesterday's video there are two almost simultaneous events, one off the south pole and the other off the NE limb. There may have been some other events (the streamers change) but we miss the actual eruptions.

3h

SPECTACULAR ERUPTION OFF THE WEST LIMB OF THE SUN: As this prominence rotated over the west limb of the Sun it erupted very violently. Note it could have contained several dozen Earths (inset). Also, as the material fell back to the Sun not the heating at the surface.

Keith Strong@drkstrong·45m

NOAA GOES SUVI - START OF M2 FLARE

1h
The M2 flare (See earlier tweets) at 10 million Degrees Kelvin. You can see the expanding shock wave from the flare so it almost certainly produced a CME. However, it is too far east to be a threat to the Earth.

52m
Here, as predicted, is the associated coronal mass ejection (see last tweet)