Quiet conditions ahead, heart-shaped coronal hole

Thursday, 2 October 2014 10:16 UTC

Geomagnetic conditions

Coronal hole effects are starting to wane but aurorae were nontheless again seen at high latitude locations yesterday like we saw in the header image above by Jani Ylinampa from Finland. The direction of the IMF continues to fluctuate but the solar wind stats are slowly trending back to background conditions which will likely continue for the next 3 days. Auroral outbreaks remain possible at high latitudes but the activity will likely decrease.

Solar activity behind the eastern limb

While solar activity is low on the earth-facing disk (this will likely continue as none of the sunspot regions on the disk are very interesting) there might be a promising new sunspot region behind the limb that could boost the solar activity when it becomes visible. STEREO data is very limited at the moment but SDO (image below) captured the eruption that occured this night. It looks like the eruption was caused by a solar flare combined with a filament eruption. This likely come from a new sunspot region behind the limb and this not the return of sunspot region 2158 which was the source of an X1.6 solar flare back on 10 September 2014. Sunspot region 2158 has returned on the disk as a plage region.

Image: NASA SDO/LMSAL/Nariaki Nitta.

The Sun loves us!

A small coronal hole located on the Sun's northern hemisphere is currently visible. Nothing out of the ordinary apart from its shape... it almost perfectly resembles a heart! Amazing don't you think?

This coronal hole will likely not influence Earth at all but even when solar activity is low, there is always something that catches the eye on our nearest star.

Image: NASA SDO.