M2.1 solar flare and a partial halo CME

Friday, 5 May 2023 17:44 UTC

M2.1 solar flare and a partial halo CME

As you might have noticed... there has been a lot of M-class activity the past few days. Unfortunately the M3.9 solar flare that took place yesterday did not produce an earth-directed eruption as the halo outline was determined to come from another far side eruption. So we are going to ignore all of these solar flares except for one: the M2.1 flare that peaked at 08:01 UTC today.

The M2.1 solar flare was a long duration event which produced a partial halo coronal mass ejection. It is estimated that this coronal mass ejection could arrive as a glancing blow late on Sunday, 7 May or early on Monday, 8 May. We do not expect a lot of geomagnetic activity from this eruption due to the faint partial halo outline but it is still worth keeping an eye on the solar wind data as you never know for sure. Talking about keeping an eye on things... the same can be said about sunspot regions 3296 and 3297 as they remain active and are capable of producing more M-class solar flares as they rotate towards the center of the earth-facing solar disk.

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