[SFDXA] Sun activity going strong! 3 Ms and a CME on its way

[Bill]

  Sun activity going strong! 3 Ms and a CME on its way

Posted by C. Alex Young and Raúl Cortés and Armando Caussade
July 19, 2023
Animation of a red sun showing a prominence.July 18-19, 2023. Today’s 
sun activity included an M2.1 flare 
<http://solar-center.stanford.edu/SID/activities/flare.html> by sunspot 
AR3363, blasted at 20:27 UTC 
<https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/universal-time/> on July 18. 
Despite being located at the very edge of the southwest limb, this 
region is still is giving us a lot of flares. It was today’s flare 
leader, again! GOES-18 SUVI image via NOAA <https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/>.


      Sun activity for July 19, 2023, is going strong! 3 Ms and a CME on
      its way

*Today’s top news:* For the second day in a row, we’ve seen one, two, 
three M flares 
<http://solar-center.stanford.edu/SID/activities/flare.html> in quick 
succession. This time the back-to-back M flares came from AR3363 and 
AR3376. The three Ms exploded in the span of less than an hour, with the 
largest being an M2.1 flare 
<http://solar-center.stanford.edu/SID/activities/flare.html> from AR3363 
at 20:27 UTC <https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/universal-time/> 
on July 18. Now at the very edge of the southwest limb, giant sunspot 
AR3363 continues flaring and is, once again, the lead flare producer of 
the day. What a spot! Today’s other M flare producer, AR3376, is showing 
an interesting north-south magnetic configuration 
<https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/help/the-magnetic-classification-of-sunspots.html> 
and an anti-Hale <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hale%27s_law>alignment, 
meaning that its magnetic field is reversed compared to other sunspots 
in the same solar hemisphere. This may be a factor in its production of 
M flares, and could be a source for more blasts as AR3376 transits the 
Earth-viewed side of our sun. We’ll watch closely. By the way, 
yesterday’s M5.7 flare from AR3363 continues to be the source of 
discussion. The highly energetic long-duration flare created a polar cap 
absorption S1 particle event 
<https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/r2-mod-hf-radio-blackout-and-s2-mod-solar-radiation-storm-17-july-2023>, 
and a coronal mass ejection (CME 
<https://earthsky.org/sun/what-are-coronal-mass-ejections/>) with a 
partial halo <https://spaceweather.com/glossary/halocmes.html>. Despite 
having occurred far to the southwest, a component of this CME is 
anticipated to reach us at Earth with a glancing blow on July 20, which 
may bring G1 <https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation>(minor) 
to G2 <https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation>(moderate) 
geomagnetic storms 
<https://earthsky.org/sun/definition-what-is-a-geomagnetic-storm/> and 
auroral displays. Aurora-chasers, get ready!
*_
_*_*FULL STORY**
**https://earthsky.org/sun/sun-activity-solar-flare-cme-aurora-updates/?mc_cid=06ffef91e3&mc_eid=fbac876af9*
_
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