More M-class solar flares

Monday, 28 September 2015 16:09 UTC

More M-class solar flares

Our Sun has been very active today with M-class solar flaring from both sunspot region 2422 and 2423. Coronagraph imagery is limited but it does not look like any of these events produced any earth-directed coronal mass ejections.

The most interesting solar flare came from sunspot region 2422 which produced it's strongest solar flare thus far: M7.6 (R2-moderate) peaking at 14:58 UTC. The solar flare was very isolated and took place near the leading delta sunspot. Early signs indicate that this impulsive solar flare likely didn't launch a coronal mass ejection.

Not all hope is lost however, there are two delta sunspots in this group and it remains a very dynamic sunspot region with many spots moving around causing pretty much constant C-class flaring at the moment. More M-class (R1-R2) events remain possible in the hours ahead.

Image: Sunspot region 2422 as seen by NASA SDO. Delta sunspots are indicated.

Any mentioned solar flare in this article has a scaling factor applied by the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), the reported solar flares are 42% smaller than for the science quality data. The scaling factor has been removed from our archived solar flare data to reflect the true physical units.

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