#ar3664

[dduane]

News from the Sun: The Return of Active (Sunspot) Region 3664

It’s still there, it’s approaching this side of the Sun again, and it’s kicking up a significant stink. The image below is from yesterday.

“Yesterday, it announced its return with an X2.8-class solar flare. Amateur astronomer Michael Karrer was watching the sun when the explosion occurred, and he captured [the above] picture of flying debris… “I have not seen an explosion like this in my 40 years of observing the sun," says Karrer. "So fast, so far out into space! It was gigantic." The explosion caused a deep shortwave radio blackout over east Asia and hurled a bright CME into space. A NASA model of the CME confirms that it will miss Mercury, Venus and Earth. None of the inner planets will be affected by this powerful event.

See the front page of SpaceWeather.com for more info on this. (Also check out this page at SpaceWeatherLive for active imaging of the flare from [I think] the LASCO instruments on the SOHO satellite.)

[dduane]

Solar shenanigans again: AR3664 pops off the biggest flare of this whole solar cycle

AR3664 just will not quit.

The sunspot region is now so far off-center as far as Earth is concerned—indeed, nearly rotated out of sight—that it's very unlikely to do anything at all to us, aurora-wise. But still...! So much drama. :)

[cronosmos]

Mancha solar del ancho de 15 Tierras entra en erupción y lanza colosal llamarada solar clase X

Mancha solar del ancho de 15 Tierras entra en erupción y lanza colosal llamarada solar clase X

AR3664 no es una mancha solar cualquiera. Posee el ancho de 15 planetas Tierra y ha entrado en…

LEE MÁS

[teledyn]

Remember Carrington?

DoomsdaysCW (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image #SolarFlares, #Spaceweather via Spaceweather.com And there's a reason I held onto my eclipse glasses. Read on... "THIS S

Sunspot #AR3664 has grown so large, it is now visually rivaling the great #Carrington sunspot of Sept. 1859. To illustrate their similarity, Carrington's famous sketch (to scale) has been added to a picture of today's sun:

"How big is AR3664? Sprawling almost 200,000 km from end to end, it is 15 times wider than Earth. You can see AR3664 through ordinary eclipse glasses with no magnification at all. Moreover, it is easy to project an image of this sunspot onto the sidewalk or a white screen just as Carrington did in the 19th century.

"Carrington's sunspot is famous because in August and Sept. 1859 it emitted a series of intense #SolarFlares and #CMEs. The resulting #geomagnetic storms set fire to telegraph offices and sparked auroras from Cuba to Hawaii. The '#CarringtonEvent' has since become a touchstone of space weather in pop culture, with headlines stoking fears of an "internet apocalypse" if it repeats. Recent studies suggest that Carrington-class storms occur once every 40 to 60 years, so we're overdue.