Space Weather Live (Page 3)

April Fools, Coronal hole faces Earth Yesterday’s article about NASA launching a satellite to close solar coronal holes in order to make human missions to Mars possible was of course the SpaceWeatherLive April Fools prank. It was entertaining to see all of your responses and a couple of you even fell for the prank. Great fun! If you missed the article and like a good laugh be sure to click here and give it a read. Space Weather Live Go to SourceRead More →

C4.8 solar flare A new sunspot region that received sunspot number 2736 earlier today erupted with a long duration C-class solar flare. The solar flare peaked at 11:18 UTC and reached a maximum X-ray flux of C4.8. The eruption was associated with a Type II radio sweep which indicated straight away that this event was likely to be eruptive and thus launched a coronal mass ejection into space.     Space Weather Live Go to SourceRead More →

Eruptive flares, NOAA G1 watch The past few days, sunspot region 2734 faced Earth. While the sunspot region wasn’t very complex it was the first proper sunspot region in quite some time and produced a couple of small solar flares. The two most noteworthy events were a C1.3 solar flare on 8 March and a B6.5 solar flare on 9 March. While B and C class solar flares aren’t very interesting normally, these two events showed signs that they might have ejected some solar plasma into space. Keep on reading to find out more… Space Weather Live Go to SourceRead More →

Coronal hole faces Earth, G1 watch It’s that time of the month again as we have a familiar coronal hole facing our planet today that should influence the solar wind environment around our planet for a couple of days at the end of this month, and the beginning of next month. Space Weather Live Go to SourceRead More →

C5.0 solar flare A sign of life from our star! Sunspot region 2733 erupted with a C5.0 solar flare today at 13:22 UTC. While not the kind of solar fireworks like M or X-class solar flares, this is a fairly decent solar flare during solar minimum. In fact, this is the strongest solar flare since a C4 class solar flare that took place on 30/03/2018. Space Weather Live Go to SourceRead More →

SpaceWeatherLive is now available in Ukrainian! After English, Estonian, Spanish, German, French, Dutch, Polish, Italian, Russian and Swedish we are very happy to be able to introduce an eleventh language here on SpaceWeatherLive. You can now access the website and our mobile app in the Ukrainian language! Space Weather Live Go to SourceRead More →

Solar Cycle 25 and the 10.7 cm radio solar flux Following our previous guest post regarding the upcoming Solar Cycle 25 we have yet another guest post. This time from Patrick Geryl. Patrick does research in astrophysics, especially everything related to the Sun. He has currently published 3 articles on Researchgate. At this moment he is working with Jan Alvestad from Solen on an article: “High Resolution Sunspot Calculations.” He hopes to makes his breakthrough with his prediction about the start of solar cycle 25. Patrick claims that Solar Cycle 25 started in November 2018. How did he came to this conclusion? Keep reading toRead More →

Are we at the beginning of Solar Cycle 25? We are doing something new today, a guest post! Good friend of the website Christian Harris who is a passionate hobby astronomer and very knowledgeable in the field of space weather started a great discussion on Facebook about something which could signal that we are at solar minimum or just beginning with Solar Cycle 25. An intriguing post from Christian that we really wanted to share with you. Below you will find his post. Let us know what you think of Christian’s observation! Space Weather Live Go to SourceRead More →

The NOAA SWPC has issued a minor G1 geomagnetic storm watch for this Friday, 19 October. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

Minor G1 geomagnetic storm conditions were observed earlier this night as a dense solar wind structure arrived at our planet. The north-south direction of the interplanetary magnetic field went mostly southward dipping as low as -9nT and that combined with the equinox effect caused us to reach minor G1 geomagnetic storm conditions at 02:45 UTC. Source is likely the southern extension of the polar coronal hole that you can see in this video from NASA/SDO. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

Happy birthday to ourselves! SpaceWeatherLive.com celebrates its 10th birthday today! On 15 September 2008, we registered the URL www.spaceweatherlive.com and SpaceWeatherLive was born. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

It has been many months since we’ve last seen a strong solar flare or even a decent sunspot region. It is no secret that we are well on our way to solar minimum. However, today exactly one year ago, our Sun looked very different compared to how it looks today. Multiple sunspot regions were visible but by far the most interesting sunspot region was sunspot region 2673. Sunspot region 2673 was on 6 September 2018 one of the most complex sunspot regions that we have seen this solar cycle and it erupted that day with an X9.3 (R3-strong) solar flare which will likely remain theRead More →

We were wrong! The coronal mass ejection we talked about back on 22 August did arrive at Earth and sparked strong G3 geomagnetic storming conditions today. A big surprise for everyone which goes to show how unpredictable space weather is. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

A buzz started to develop in the space weather community about a possible earth-directed coronal mass ejection. We took a look at the event and weren’t impressed but considering it is solar minimum and there hasn’t been much to get excited about, we do a short analysis anyway. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

Welcome to August! The year 2018 is now 212 days old and according to the numbers from the NOAA SWPC, the Sun has been spotless during 120 days this year thus far. The sunspots regions that did face Earth this year have been far from impressive and we had no M or X-class solar flares yet this year. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

Sunspot region 2712 didn’t manage to develop further since we wrote about it yesterday and has been pretty quiet today with only a couple of B-class solar flares. However, sunspot region 2712 is not the center of our attention today. Indeed, a coronal hole takes the spotlight today. A southern hemisphere coronal hole close to the solar equator is facing our planet today and sending an enhanced solar wind stream towards our planet. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

Summer is upon us in the northern hemisphere and that means very little aurora sightings. The fact that we are in a very quiet space weather period doesn’t help either of course but after a long and cold winter these warm rays of sunshine are very much welcome. Right? Or are you starting to experience aurora withdrawal symptoms? Either way, something has been drawing our attention today and that is the Sun’s X-ray output as measured by GOES-15. Indeed: we are talking about solar flares. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

A lot of aurora enthusiasts have put 17 May in their agenda as a possible date for some enhanced geomagnetic activity and thus auroral displays. Why? Because that is the date that a coronal hole solar wind stream is expected to arrive at Earth from a coronal hole that managed to give us moderate G2 geomagnetic storm conditions back in April.   Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

The anticipated coronal hole solar wind stream has arrived at our planet and packed quite a punch. Active geomagnetic conditions (Kp4) were expected but the solar wind conditions were so impressive it was enough for us to reach the moderate G2 geomagnetic storm threshold which equals a Kp of 6 and some impressive auroral displays around the globe. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

After literally months of planning, brain storming, coding, translating and fighting over the tiniest details, we are very proud to present to you a brand new front page for SpaceWeatherLive.com and our Dutch website Poollicht.be! Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →