C5 solar flare/filament eruption, earth-directed CME

Sunday, 19 April 2015 14:32 UTC

C5 solar flare/filament eruption, earth-directed CME

The Sun released an asymmetrical full halo coronal mass ejection yesterday (as seen by SOHO) due to a C5.2 solar flare in combination with a filament eruption near sunspot region 2321.

A slow, faint, asymmetrical full halo coronal mass ejection raced away from the Sun at a speed of about 400km/s which is only slightly faster than the background solar wind. We expect this coronal mass ejection to arrive at Earth on 22 April with likely no or only a very minimal increase in the solar wind speed. No geomagnetic storming is expected from this event due to the slow speed of the CME but high latitude sky watchers should be alert for possible enhanced auroral displays on 22 and 23 April if the parameters of the IMF are favourable. Kp-values up to 4 (active geomagnetic conditions) are possible.

Images: SOHO/LASCO C2 (left) and C3 (right) coronagraph animations.

Any mentioned solar flare in this article has a scaling factor applied by the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), the reported solar flares are 42% smaller than for the science quality data. The scaling factor has been removed from our archived solar flare data to reflect the true physical units.

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