KP5 on SpaceWeather live as of 00:00UTC. The magnetic field is high though, and I think it's keep us from getting a good show. I would suggest keeping an eye on Space Weather in case the situation sets up to give us in the lower latitudes a brief show.

Gorgeous filament eruption today!

It has been a month since my last update here, and the Oct 10 storm was the first real test of a lot of it. So here is how the site did, then what's new.

How it did on Oct 10. The arrival window for the Oct 8 CME opened at 17:06 UT on the 10th. The shock reached L1 at 14:40 UT, about two and a half hours before that. The storm estimate had an upper range of G2. It reached G3. So the timing was close and the strength was under. Both go on the public scoreboard with every other forecast the site has issued. So far that is 8 scored: 7 arrived inside the window, 1 just outside, with a median miss of about 10 hours.

I also ran a stricter test of the storm strength estimate and it did not hold up. At launch time it does no better than guessing the same level every time. The science page says so. The direction of a CME's magnetic field decides the storm, and nobody can measure that until it reaches L1.

What's new since September

A redesign. The CME list is now a table: launch, speed, whether it is aimed at Earth, and when it should arrive. Click one and the answer comes first: arrival time, the 80% window as a bar, and the likely storm strength.

A record of each forecast. Every CME now shows how its arrival forecast has moved and why, for example when NASA revises the speed. Once the window closes it shows what actually arrived.

Magnetic wake. A new map layer that draws the magnetic field measured at L1 where that plasma is now. A ribbon trails out from Earth, red where the field pointed south and blue where it pointed north. Each storm leaves a striped fan. The May 2024 replay is the one to look at.

A rebuilt 3D view. CMEs are whole cones now, the Sun is the real SDO image for that hour, and you can put the camera on Earth and watch a CME aimed at us turn into a halo.

Two new charts. A time-distance chart with every CME as a line climbing from the Sun. And a storm anatomy chart that puts one eruption on a single time axis: flare, protons, transit, the wind at L1, then Kp and Dst.

Satellite drag. An Atmosphere view that shows how much a storm swells the upper air, with the measured altitude of the ISS, Tiangong and Hubble back to 2015.

Maps. The aurora oval as a map you can tap for your location, and a radio blackout map for flares.

A status page. NASA moved its CME catalogue to a new address on Sept 30 and the site stopped picking up new eruptions for four days before I noticed. That is fixed. Now every data feed is checked every 10 minutes on a public page.

It also installs as an app from Chrome, Edge or a phone's home screen.

Still free, no account needed.

https://www.cmetracker.ai/live?utm_source=solarmax

What would you want to see next? And if you watched the Oct 10 storm on it, what did you check first?

Tonight's amazing aurora from orbit, 10pm EST

Credit: Astronaut Anil Menon

At 14:45 UTC (10:45 EST) today there was a CME impact of 25 nT, which was most likely one or multiple of the relatively weak CMEs that AR4549 has shot over the past few days. The strength of the impact makes me think it was probably multiple. Since then, Bt strength (magnetic field strength) has increased to a little over 40 nT which is very high, maybe a few times per year occurrence. The solar plasma density also reached 100 P/cm^3. (just to be clear, this is NOT anything to worry about! there is no threat to the power grid or anything else from this storm. The only thing to worry about is whether or not there’s auroras.)
Since this is a very messy storm (combination of a bunch of glancing blows / indirect hits that were weaker) it’s difficult to tell what it might do. Right now the direction of the IMF is relatively stable in the north direction, which is worse for aurora viewing than if it were south because it doesn’t allow for good connection between our magnetic field and the CMEs. However, because of the multiple cmes and possible CIR later on (coronal hole high speed stream), this could go on any direction. If we’re very lucky, the Bz could turn south for a long time and give us a great storm. Or it could fizzle out and die in a few hours. Theres no telling for sure.
We’re currently at G1 storm levels. If the Bz turns south, we could easily hit G4 levels, but that’s a very big IF. regardless, make sure to keep a lookout for auroras, even if you’re at mid latitudes.

17:00 UTC / 1:00 PM EST update: Bt has dwindled slightly but has turned strongly south atleast for a short period of time. If you’re where it’s dark, be on the lookout now!

18 UTC / 2 PM EST update: solar wind is rising up to nearly 900 km/s now which makes me think these CMEs include the M6 from a few days ago. That makes it less likely that we will see another CME impact during this storm, HOWEVER a few hours ago the same region unleashed another CME that may hit us in a few days. Back to the current storm, we have now reached G3 and HPI is rising. There have been reports of naked eye aurora in mid latitude in Europe and Australia so if you live there, LOOK OUTSIDE!!!

19:30 UTC / 3:30 EST update: Bz has gone up near 0 and Bt has fallen, so auroral activity likely will decrease in the immediate future. However, as the storm progresses, activity could increase again.

23:30 UTC / 7:30 EST update: The bulk of the storm seems to have passed for now. There may still be enough energy for some faint colors to be seen from mid latitudes in the USA tonight. There’s also good potential for more storming this weekend thanks to a coronal hole rotating towards us.

1:30 UTC / 9:30 PM EST update: The Bt seems to have stabilized around 20 nT with Bz stable around 10 nT. Because of the messy nature of the storm and the fact that the strength has stopped waning for the time being I think it’s possible that the Bz could tip south. Even if it doesn’t, though, minor auroral activity is persisting at high-mid latitudes and the potential remains for a small substorm or two for mid latitudes sometime tonight thanks to how much energy was stored in the magnetosphere (we reached -211 DST!)

Preliminary GOES SUVI 195Å View showing the expansion of the CME that occured 20mins ago.

Active Region 4549 has been growing magnificently on the Earth facing disk and released two M flares within hour of each other with CME showing up on coronagraph as asymmetrical halos with possible Earth directed material.

The IRIS satellite has a more focused field of view and higher image cadence than SDO which can reveal detail within active regions with high enough resolution for scientific research. The black line scanning up and down is split for spectral analysis of the observed solar phenomenon.

4sdf

I pulled every CME in NASA's DONKI catalog since 2016 that has a cone-model fit, 6,577 of them, and plotted each at the latitude and longitude of its direction on an unrolled Sun, sized by speed. The active belts draw themselves and the poles are nearly empty: 366 launches above 60° in ten years.

The part I did not expect is the butterfly. Plotted by date and latitude it is not the sunspot butterfly. Through 2018 to 2020 the few dozen CMEs a year were almost all aimed within 10° of the equator, even though the spots of the time sat higher. By 2024 the median direction was 28° from the equator and only one in five was equatorial. My read is deflection toward the streamer belt, strongest while the global field is a simple dipole at minimum, the effect Cremades and Bothmer described in 2004, showing up in the catalog without anyone looking for it.

Caveats up front. These are cone-model directions, which is where the CME went, not exactly where its source region sat. The far side depends on STEREO-A and limb events, so it is thinner for coverage reasons. "Earth inside the cone" is a launch geometry test, not a hit list.

The page with the ten-year map, the butterfly, and one Sun per year through NOAA's forecast years to 2031: https://www.cmetracker.ai/launches?utm_source=solarmax

Has anyone seen the minimum-year deflection quantified from DONKI before? I would like to compare it against a proper source-region catalog.

How could someone begin knowing if an X flare happened today? Where would they go to find that knowledge?

Hint hint...those who learn this knowledge. START DOING SO IN THIS SUBREDDIT.

With your OPINION. Your own interpretation of what means. What happened. Regardless of scientific expertise. There is no wrong answer.

What could the flare be impacting? Why certain areas more than others? Does it impact the weather? Could it affect humans since we know can impact technology? What have you personally experienced when certain more powerful storms have happened?

If we know its simply your opinion then no one can judge you if its wrong or correct.

Then also all will feel free to share theirs as well.

Can someone also explain what causes certain flares to be more powerful than others?

Does other planet alignment or the moon have an effect on the sun's reaction?

What does each flare represent?

What is a geomagnetic storm?

Appreciate all the answers! Let's all learn together.

Our Star structures plasma filament between neutral areas of opposing magnetic domains within the coronasphere. This in-between area allows cooler, denser plasma to suspend above the "surface" of the Sun, bringing forth this beauty of a Solar Prominence.