Two small coronal holes faces Earth

Tuesday, 24 May 2016 18:10 UTC

Two small coronal holes faces Earth

Solar activity remains at low levels as we only have one numbered sunspot region on the Earth-facing solar disk. Most of the geomagnetic activity at Earth thus has to come from coronal holes and today we have yet another coronal hole facing our planet.

It's actually not one, but two smaller coronal holes that face Earth. We should start to feel the effects of their coronal hole solar wind streams in about 2 to 3 days from and a Kp of 4 (active geomagnetic conditions) can be expected. Sky watchers in Tasmania (Australia) and perhaps around the US-Canadian border should be alert for aurora when the solar wind stream arrives.

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.

Thank you for reading this article! Did you have any trouble with the technical terms used in this article? Our help section is the place to be where you can find in-depth articles, a FAQ and a list with common abbreviations. Still puzzled? Just post on our forum where we will help you the best we can! Never want to miss out on a space weather event or one of our news articles again? Subscribe to our mailing list, follow us on Twitter and Facebook and download the SpaceWeatherLive app for Android and iOS!

Latest news

Support SpaceWeatherLive.com!

A lot of people come to SpaceWeatherLive to follow the Solar activity or if there is a chance to see the aurora, but with more traffic comes higher costs to keep the servers online. If you like SpaceWeatherLive and want to support the project you can choose a subscription for an ad-free site or consider a donation. With your help we can keep SpaceWeatherLive online!

No Ads on SWL Pro!
No Ads on SWL Pro! Subscriptions
Donations
Support SpaceWeatherLive.com! Donate
Support SpaceWeatherLive with our merchandise
Check out our merchandise

Latest alerts

Get instant alerts!

Space weather facts

Last X-flare2026/04/24X2.5
Last M-flare2026/05/29M1.1
Last geomagnetic storm2026/05/16Kp6- (G2)
Spotless days
Last 365 days3 days
20263 days (2%)
Last spotless day2026/02/24
Monthly mean Sunspot Number
April 202679.3 -6.6
June 2026146 +66.7
Last 30 days97.9 +6

This day in history*

Solar flares
12000X1.09
22003M9.36
32000M5.9
42003M5.64
52007M3.68
DstG
12025-111G3
22003-91G1
31991-71G3
41958-68G1
51967-55
*since 1994

Aurora on this day in history

No observations submitted for this day in history. If you've observed the aurora and you have some amazing photos to show off, submit your observations now!
Submit your aurora observation

Social networks