Categories: Solar Astronomysun

Aurora Alert! Solar Flare Heading Our Way

This image shows a three and a half hour (0000 - 0330 UT) time lapse movie of the flare and filament event. Credit: NASA/SDO

An active sunspot (1123) erupted early this morning (Nov. 12th), producing a C4-class solar flare and apparently hurling a filament of material in the general direction of Earth. Coronagraph images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and NASA’s twin STEREO spacecraft show a faint coronal mass ejection emerging from the blast site and heading off in a direction just south of the sun-Earth line. The cloud could deliver a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field sometime between Nov. 13th to the 15th. High latitude sky watchers could see auroras on those dates.

New sunspot 1123 in the Sun's southern hemisphere is crackling with C-class solar flares. Credit: SDO/HMI.

Here’s a look at the two sunspots currently visible on the Sun.

Speaking of sunspots, there’s a great video from Oct. 25-27, 2010, showing two sunspots merging:

Remove All Ads on Universe Today

Join our Patreon for as little as $3!

Get the ad-free experience for life

Find out more on SpaceWeather.com and the Solar Dynamics Observatory website.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/