Today (August 6th), the GOES 15 satellite registered a C9-class flare around 04:30 UTC, and a C5-class flare at around 08:00 UTC. And guess what? They both appear to have come from our new active region, just on the edge of the sun's eastern limb. The site, www.helioviewer.org , posted to YouTube a video of the C5-class flare. It used the images from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), at 304 Angstroms, aboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKsqwtKyWb4 .
Meanwhile, back at Earth, NOAA forecasters are estimating a 25-percent chance of polar geomagnetic storms on August 7th/8th. That's when the August 4th coronal mass ejection (CME) is expected to give Earth that glancing blow as it passes. You may recall that this is the CME that was generated during that magnetic filament eruption between the sun's Active Regions 1538 and 1540 (AR 1538 and AR 1540). Observers near the poles should be on the lookout for aurora activity over August 7th/8th. Stay tuned...
To monitor solar flare activity minute by minute, visit the "Today's Space Weather" page of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center, URL: www.swpc.noaa.gov .
To learn more about the sun and to stay current on solar activity, visit the mission home pages of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov and the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov .
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