SpaceWeatherLive .com
Real-time auroral and solar activity

Surprise M1.3 solar flare

Sunday, 7 August 2016 15:51 UTC

Surprise M1.3 solar flare

Solar activity increased surprisingly to moderate levels today thanks to an M1.3 (R1-minor) solar flare that took place at the NE limb.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is still having issues with its AIA instrument so we will have to rely on secondary sources like PROBA2 or one of the GOES satellites for the time being. Using GOES-15 imagery, it looks like this M-class event (which was closely followed by an C8.5 solar flare) came from a sunspot region on the north-east limb. This is likely the return of sunspot region 2567 which produced seven M-class solar flares during the last solar rotation. Are we in for two weeks of enhanced solar activity. Lets hope so!

Any mentioned solar flare in this article has a scaling factor applied by the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), the reported solar flares are 42% smaller than for the science quality data. The scaling factor has been removed from our archived solar flare data to reflect the true physical units.

Thank you for reading this article! Did you have any trouble with the technical terms used in this article? Our help section is the place to be where you can find in-depth articles, a FAQ and a list with common abbreviations. Still puzzled? Just post on our forum where we will help you the best we can! Never want to miss out on a space weather event or one of our news articles again? Subscribe to our mailing list, follow us on Twitter and Facebook and download the SpaceWeatherLive app for Android and iOS!

Back to top

Latest news

Latest forum messages

CME from M7.1 Dec. 31st 59Current Farside Activity 271Unspecified geomagnetic activity 58AR14324 75Filaments and prominences 422
More topics

Support SpaceWeatherLive.com!

A lot of people come to SpaceWeatherLive to follow the Solar activity or if there is a chance to see the aurora, but with more traffic comes higher costs to keep the servers online. If you like SpaceWeatherLive and want to support the project you can choose a subscription for an ad-free site or consider a donation. With your help we can keep SpaceWeatherLive online!

No Ads on SWL Pro!
No Ads on SWL Pro! Subscriptions
Donations
Support SpaceWeatherLive.com! Donate
Support SpaceWeatherLive with our merchandise
Check out our merchandise

Latest alerts

Get instant alerts!

Space weather facts

Last X-flare2025/12/08X1.1
Last M-flare2025/12/31M7.11
Last geomagnetic storm2026/01/02Kp5 (G1)
Spotless days
Last spotless day2022/06/08
Monthly mean Sunspot Number
December 2025124 +32.2
January 2026122 -2
Last 30 days111.1 +8.3

This day in history*

Solar flares
12025X1.2
22025X1.1
32025M5.8
41998M3.7
52025M2.3
DstG
11988-66
21968-63
31979-59
41990-51G1
51957-50
*since 1994

Social networks

SpaceWeatherLive