The return of sunspot regions 2172 and 2173

Friday, 17 October 2014 10:36 UTC

In the previous rotation old regions 2172 and 2173 were the source of multiple M-class and C-class flares with the largest one on october second which was an M7.3 class solar flare. Read our previous story about those regions here.

Now that the old regions re-emerged onto the visible solar disk, it's time to see what remains of those regions after the activity on the farside of the sun, including a very long duration M2 (probably stronger) event on october 14th. Old region 2173 (the most southern of the two) is almost completely vanished and all that is left of it are big faculae. Old region 2172, now numbered as region 2192, has developed further while it transited the farside of the Sun and looks like a very big and very complex sunspot region with a strong delta structure in the northern part of the central penumbral soup. Normally delta structure can't be seen good when sunspots are close to the limb but with this region it's already very clearly visible in the magnetogram.

Due to the magnetic complexity of the region, a major event can't be excluded. Keep following us on our channels and website for further updates and live alerts.