Filament eruption

Sunday, 5 April 2015 13:18 UTC

First things first: solar activity remains low with no sunspot regions on the disk which could produce a strong solar flare. In fact, this filament eruption was associated with the largest X-ray event of the past 24 hours. A C3 hyderflare followed after the filament disappeared. Based on imagery from SDO we could conclude right away that most of the material would travel to the south-east and miss Earth, something that SOHO confirms. Coronagraph imagery from SOHO shows that the coronal mass ejection does expand to form a partial halo of more than 180 degrees but the halo does not expand to form a full halo meaning we will see a glancing blow from this coronal mass ejection at best. Based on the speed of the eruption which is estimated to be around 700km/s we can conclude that a glancing blow is possible late on Tuesday or perhaps early on Wednesday. We do have to note that only a very minor part could have an earth-directed component and this shock passage will likely not be strong enough for a geomagnetic storm.

Images: Coronagraph imagery from SOHO/LASCO C2 (left) and C3 (right) showing the coronal mass ejection associated with the filament eruption.