M5.6 solar flare, dynamic sunspot region 2403

Monday, 24 August 2015 17:19 UTC

M5.6 solar flare, dynamic sunspot region 2403

Sunspot region 2403 remains active and this morning it produced the strongest solar flare thus far: an impulsive M5.6 (R2-moderate) solar flare that peaked at 07:33 UTC. No radio sweeps were reported from this impulsive solar flare which indicated that a coronal mass ejection from this event would be unlikely. SOHO coronagraph imagery confirms that this solar flare indeed did not launch a coronal mass ejection.

Sunspot region 2403

Sunspot region 2403 is still in a phase of steady growth but as we reported yesterday, there is not a whole lot of magnetic mixing going on this group. We do count four delta sunspots in the trailing portion of this sunspot region but they are all small and not too impressive. Two structures which are potential delta areas in the leading portion of this group are indicated by circles but there is no solid penumbral connection to really call it a delta class.

Image: Sunspot region 2403 as seen by SDO in visible light. Plus and minus signs indicate sunspot polarities.

Another low-level M-class event (R1) is likely in the coming 24 hours but the lack of any solid, larger delta structures make R2 or R3+ (X-class) events very unlikely at this point.

M-class flare probability for the coming 24 hours: 55% chance
X-class flare probability for the coming 24 hours: 5% chance

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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