A filament in the northern hemisphere, east side of the solar disk, erupted around 1UT, March 04. The active region 1429, located near one end of the filament was at that moment flaring in the B-level. This active region was the source of 2 M-flares and several C-flares from March 02 onwards. With the M2.0 flare peaking at 10:45 this morning,
another CME is associated. Because of the location of the source region on the solar disk, the CME's are probably not ejected straight to Earth. More M-flares are likely. There might be a small geomagnetic influence (K=3-4) from the long stretched coronal hole in the southern hemisphere from tomorrow onwards.
[
link to sidc.oma.be]
Mar 04 1601 UTC CONTINUED ALERT: Electron 2MeV Integral Flux exceeded 1000pfu [
link to www.swpc.noaa.gov]
this is something i posted on another thread that was talking about the sunspot number
so many of us will see all over the place how the sunspot number is so low and because of this, were expecting a weak peak to this solar cycle, and that it could be a few more years before we event see the solar max
its not the sunspots that we need to worrie about
they wont really do much damage to us here on Earth
what we need to be watching is the CME's and Filaments
the mass the sun flings at earth is what will do major damage here on the ground
you know, before this solar cycle, they use to say that Filaments on the sun were a rare thing
now we see them all over the sun and they snap and lift off almost as much as we see ordinary CME's
We are in solar cycle 24 right now with this cycle about to peak
just a quick look back at the time directly before solar cycle 23 peaked, in 2001, will tell a story
"Sept. 13, 2000 -- On Monday, Sept. 11, the sunspot number dropped to its lowest value of the year. The face of the Sun looked remarkably blank with only a few tiny spots visible in telescopes.""You don't need sunspots to have filaments, so these types of explosions can occur even when the sunspot number is low."
[
link to science.nasa.gov]
only 7 months after the above report, we seen the 2nd largest solar flare ever recorded
"a very large solar flare occurred on April 2, 2001, an X20-class, but the blast was directed away from Earth. This flare was the second most powerful ever recorded"
[
link to en.wikipedia.org]
