2012-11-21

Exciting solar day

A bit of a lull was broken today by solar flares, and a surprise nudge from the solar wind.
2 Large spots have developed rapidly over the last few days, AR1618 unleashed 2 large M class flares. Luckily enough the first was on the daylight side as seen from Birr and my solar flare monitor picked it up. Then this evening the solar wind gave us a surprise nudge that sparked aurorae. This was out of the blue and just goes to show how unpredictable space weather is. You can see from my magnetogram that activity started about 6 and finished about 9. I wonder will we see "Gradwell's Gap". I have noticed that the best activity seems to occur after a gap of many hours after first impact. So maybe tomorrow evening we'll get to see a better display.

Dave Gradwell


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