M5.3 solar flare, M4.4 CME

Sunday, 2 April 2017 09:53 UTC

M5.3 solar flare, M4.4 CME

Sunspot region 2644 (N14W60) does it again! It just produced a long duration M5.3 solar flare (R2-moderate) that peaked today at 08:02 UTC.

Another coronal mass ejection was likely launched but there is a good chance that it is directed away from Earth. Additional information on that later when coronagraph imagery comes available but don't get your hopes up!

ALERT: Type IV Radio Emission
Begin Time: 2017 Apr 02 0800 UTC
ALERT: Type II Radio Emission
Begin Time: 2017 Apr 02 0807 UTC
Estimated Velocity: 628 km/s

M4.4 coronal mass ejection

Yesterday's M4.4 solar flare which was also produced by sunspot region 2644 was highly eruptive as we saw in the news article that we posted yesterday but we only now have enough coronagraph imagery to analyse the eruption and see the trajectory of the expelled plasma cloud. A closer look at the available imagery shows us that the coronal mass ejection is heading well towards the north-west and it is not expected to arrive at Earth.

NASA/ESA SOHO/LASCO C2 running difference coronagraph animation showing the M4.4 coronal mass ejection.

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.

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