Sunspot region 2674

Friday, 1 September 2017 18:03 UTC

Sunspot region 2674

We admit! We have been ignoring sunspot region 2674 since it appeared on the solar disk a few days ago. It was a large sunspot region at the time with two massive sunspots. It however wasn't all that complicated and there wasn't much of a risk that it would produce a strong solar flare. That changed however during the past 12 hours or so. Keep on reading to find out what sparked our sudden interest in this sunspot region.

What sparked our interest are a couple of C-class solar flares from this sunspot region. A closer look reveals that this sunspot region has been developing nicely during the past 12 hours with some rapid flux emergence in the middle of the group between the large trailer and leading sunspots. There is some magnetic mixing going on there and a small delta structure is forming. The chances aren't high yet but if this development continues we might see a low-level M-class (R1) event in the near future.

⇧  Video: Sunspot region 2674 as seen in visible light by NASA SDO. The video covers the past 24 hours. Note the spot development in the middle.

Any mentioned solar flare in this article has a scaling factor applied by the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), the reported solar flares are 42% smaller than for the science quality data. The scaling factor has been removed from our archived solar flare data to reflect the true physical units.

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