Double X-flares, glancing blow possible

Tuesday, 8 October 2024 17:14 UTC

Double X-flares, glancing blow possible

Solar activity reached high levels with an X2.1 solar flare that peaked at 19:02 UTC yesterday. This event came from sunspot region 3842 which was followed by a long duration X1.0 solar flare which was a combined effort between sunspot region 3842 and 3844.

The latter eruption produced a large coronal mass ejection of the west limb with LASCO showing an asymmetrical full halo coronal mass ejection. It did not look earth-directed from the get-go but with additional LASCO imagery we do see a asymmetrical full halo coronal mass ejection with the bulk clearly heading well south-west of our planet.

A strong impact at Earth from this event is not very likely, but a glancing blow or shock is very much possible. Hard to say what kind of activity to expect from it but we do not expect conditions above Kp5. Based on the speed of the cloud, a glancing blow could be possible early on Thursday, 10 October. The NOAA SWPC is still analyzing the event but in their latest analysis they did mention the cloud appears to be ahead of the Sun-Earth line.

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 Sun's activity or if there is aurora to be seen, but with more traffic comes higher server costs. Consider a donation if you enjoy SpaceWeatherLive so we can keep the website online!

100%
Support SpaceWeatherLive with our merchandise
Check out our merchandise

Latest alerts

Get instant alerts!

Space weather facts

Last X-flare2024/10/31X2.0
Last M-flare2024/11/04M3.6
Last geomagnetic storm2024/10/12Kp5 (G1)
Spotless days
Last spotless day2022/06/08
Monthly mean Sunspot Number
September 2024141.4 -74.1
November 2024224 +82.6
Last 30 days160.1 +6.2

This day in history*

Solar flares
12013X4.93
21998X1.21
32014X1.14
42003M7.6
52004M5.72
DstG
12023-172G3
21991-92G2
31986-74G1
41959-73G1
51993-71G1
*since 1994

Social networks