Coronal hole faces Earth
Wednesday, 26 August 2020 11:47 UTC
A coronal hole is facing our planet today. While this coronal hole is poorly defined in the sense that there is not one large opening, we do see several openings (dark areas) which combined cover a significant portion of the Sun's northern hemisphere. We even see an opening near the equator that has already passed the central meridian.
A northern hemisphere coronal hole is facing Earth. Enhanced solar wind could arrive in ~3 days - Follow live on https://t.co/bsXLidnzGh pic.twitter.com/myoXaCxAuo
— SpaceWeatherLive (@_SpaceWeather_) August 26, 2020
We think it is likely that Earth will be under the influence of a fast solar wind regime for a couple of days starting late on Friday (28 August) or early on Saturday (29 August). Highest chance of enhanced geomagnetic conditions would be on Saturday where active geomagnetic conditions (Kp4) are likely to be reached. Looking towards the east limb we see another opening south of the northern hemisphere polar coronal hole which should face Earth in about two days from now. If this coronal opening is on a low enough latitude, we could see multiple days with higher than average solar wind speeds. Could be an interesting few days for high latitude sky watchers!
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