Coronal hole faces Earth

Saturday, 20 February 2016 01:37 UTC

A quick look back shows us that the southern hemisphere coronal hole did not disappoint us and gave us multiple days where we reached geomagnetic storm levels. Aurora filled the skies at many high latitude locations and were even captured on latitudes as low as the Netherlands!

Image: Marcel de Bont (Skellefteå, Sweden)

Image: Jüri Voit (Estonia)

Video: ‎James Rowley-Hill‎ (Norfolk, UK)

Image: Vaughn Johnson Photography (Alaska, USA)

Image: Colin Taylor (Kirkwall, Scotland)

Image: Vincent van Leijen (The Netherlands)

Now we have yet another coronal hole that faces Earth. This time its a southern extension of the northern hemisphere polar coronal hole that faces our planet. Solar wind flowing from this coronal hole could arrive in two to three days from now and bring us another round of geomagnetic unrest and of couse... aurora!

Header image: the coronal hole as seen by NASA SDO.