2003 Halloween solar storms, sunspot region 2192

Tuesday, 28 October 2014 16:30 UTC

11 years ago - The Halloween Solar Storms of 2003

Evolution of sunspot region 2192

Solar activity has been high since our our last update with a couple of M-class solar flares but we haven't seen an X-class solar flare. The strongest solar flare in the past 24 hours was an M6.6 (R2-moderate) solar flare at 03:32 UTC but as you might have guessed already, there were no coronal mass ejections associated with any of these events.

Sunspot region 2192 continues to slowly decay again loosing penumbral area and some smaller umbra spots. Most of the decay continues to occur in it's intermediate layout and around the leader spot but also the trailer spots seems to be decaying now. Three delta sunspots have decayed but at least four small delta sunspots remain where they are. While sunspot region 2192 remains a large and magnetically complex sunspot region we can conclude that it did loose magnetic complexity during the past 24 hours. We can still expect M-class (R1-R2) activity in the coming 24 hours but X-class solar flares are becoming less likely. We slightly lower the solar flare probability percantages today compared to yesterday.

M-class flare probability: 70% chance
X-class flare probability: 25% chance

We do need to note that sunspot region 2192 is now coming really close to the west limb making accurate measurements of this sunspot region it's complexity more and more difficult. This will likely be the last update that we can give where we can discuss how complex sunspot region 2192 is. In the next 24 to 48 hours, sunspot region 2192 will rotate off the Earth-facing soalr disk and start its 2-week transit of the far side. If it survives, it could return the second week in November.

A strong eruption from sunspot region 2192 could still result in a solar radiation storm at Earth which would impact HF radio communications at arctic latitudes.

All the other sunspot regions on the disk are unremarkable. Any future solar flares will very likely be centered around sunspot region 2192.

Images: NASA SDO and ESA/NASA SOHO.
Video: see YouTube description.