Filament eruption, incoming coronal holes

Tuesday, 28 April 2015 18:23 UTC

While it is a fantastic event to watch as you can see in the video above from NASA SDO, there will likely be no or only a very minor earth-directed component to this coronal mass ejection. SOHO does show a bright coronal mass ejection leaving the Sun but we need to wait for more SOHO imagery to confirm the exact trajectory of this CME. More information will be provided later if needed.

Coronal holes facing Earth

Solar activity on the other hand remains low with hardly even a C-class solar flare being observed. This is likely to remain so as no sunspot regions on the earth-facing disk right now look to be capable of producing a strong solar flare.

There are however now two coronal holes facing Earth. Solar wind flowing from these coronal hole could arrive in two days for now and cause active geomagnetic conditions (up to Kp4) during the first few days of May.