Quiet times

Thursday, 13 April 2017 00:26 UTC

There were a few filament eruptions on the earth-facing solar disk the past few days but the plasma clouds were mostly heading away from Earth and are unlikely to cause a noticeable geomagnetic disturbance. There are a couple of minor coronal mass ejections to be seen on LASCO imagery heading towards the north-east over the past few days and based on STEREO imagery these were likely from flaring activity caused by old sunspot region 2644. This sunspot region was responsible for 7 M-class solar flares during the first few days of this month and the surprisingly active sunspot region is now about 5 days away from rotating onto the earth-facing side of the solar disk again.

Aurora wise we are also in a rather quiet period at the moment with near ambient solar wind conditions. These quiet conditions will likely persist in the foreseeable future. For those who are suffering during these quiet spells with no solar or auroral activity, the banner of this article is a shot of pure aurora awesomeness. This picture was made at Balnakeil Beach, Durness (Scotland) during a geomagnetic storm last month by one of our partner photographers, Mark Ferrier. His Facebook page can be found here, be sure to give it a like!