M4.4 solar flare
Saturday, 1 April 2017 22:37 UTC
Not a prank! We just had the first M-class solar flare since November last year!
It was an M4.42 solar flare (R1-minor) peaking at 21:48 UTC from sunspot region 2644 in the north-western quadrant of the Sun. Note that this solar flare is not from sunspot region 2645 that seemed more complex and faces Earth today! Sunspot region 2644 is at N14W53 not exactly facing Earth but we are happy anyway... we finally have an M-class solar flare this year!
Strong M4.42 solar #flare from #sunspot region 12644 - Follow live on https://t.co/T1Jkf6i4Cb pic.twitter.com/qTs92MeYMe
— SpaceWeatherLive (@_SpaceWeather_) April 1, 2017
First signs show that this solar flare indeed eruptive (it launched a coronal mass ejection) but the ejecta looks like it is heading well north and west pretty much away from Earth. Of course we need to wait some time before we get updated coronagraph imagery from SOHO and only then we can make a final conclusion so keep your eyes on this website for our final analysis which we will likely post tomorrow! Below we have an animation showing the eruptive nature of this solar flare. Imagine that the Earth would only be the size of a few pixels in the image below. Solar flares are powerful!
⇧ SDO/AIA 211 Angstrom running difference animation showing how eruptive the M4.4 solar flare is. Source: SIDC.
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