Calm before the next storm?

Thursday, 10 September 2015 14:23 UTC

Header image: Nick Dobinson (Randals Bay, Tasmania, Australia)

Image: Jörgen Norrland Andersson (Sweden)

Image: Jani Ylinampa Photography (Rovaniemi, Finland)

Image: Jüri Voit (Estonia)

Image: Pat Ti (Kingston Beach, Tasmania, Australia)

Image: Setina Dale (Tasmania, Australia)

Image: Lachlan Manley Photography (Tasmania, Australia)

Image: Paweł Drabowicz (Poland)

This period of relative rest will likely not last all that long as we expect a coronal hole solar wind stream to arrive tomorrow which could once again bring us back into geomagnetic storming conditions. This solar wind stream will likely be followed by another solar wind stream from a northern hemisphere coronal hole so we could again be looking at multiple days of geomagnetic unrest starting this weekend and into the beginning of next week.

This video from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows 48 hours worth of footage in the 211 Angstrom wavelength. The dark areas are coronal holes which will likely cause geomagnetic unrest in the days ahead. In the beginning of this video you will see a trans equatorial coronal hole, which should start to affect Earth tomorrow. Later in the video you will see a very large northern hemisphere coronal hole which will likely influence Earth next week.