Busy Sun! M-class flares and coronal mass ejections!

Sunday, 15 January 2023 13:19 UTC

Nevertheless, with an active Sun comes a lot of flaring activity! Most of these solar flares were not associated with obvious earth-directed coronal mass ejections. There was however one eruption from sunspot region 3182 (first partial halo coronal mass ejection in the video below) which does have a chance to pass our planet as a glancing blow late on 18 January. Active to perhaps minor storm conditions should be expected if this cloud passes our planet. The second coronal mass ejection (CME) in this video came from an M6 solar flare this night at 03:42 UTC but it is expected to miss our planet.

Yesterday's long duration M4.6 solar flare from sunspot region 3182 launched a slow partial halo coronal mass ejection which could impact our planet as a glancing blow late on 18 January. pic.twitter.com/6OBWGC57T9

— SpaceWeatherLive (@_SpaceWeather_) January 15, 2023

Live northern lights stream on YouTube

Did you know we are also on YouTube? We occasionally stream live from Kiruna, Sweden and last Friday we did just that. We had clear weather and some nice enhanced geomagnetic activity which resulted in some amazing aurora up in Swedish Lapland. Check out a replay of our stream in the video player below. Skip to about 23:00h local time for how a real sub storm looks like around the arctic circle!