Coronal hole faces Earth, Quiet Sun

Friday, 8 December 2017 18:38 UTC

This coronal hole is well connected with Earth and it resulted in minor G1 geomagnetic storm conditions only a few days ago.  This extension is however much smaller than the one that faced us on 2 December so we do not expect geomagnetic storm conditions this time around but a slight increase in the solar wind conditions at Earth will be possible on 11 December. Something to keep an eye on if you are an aurora watcher at a high latitude location. If you are a solar enthusiast you are however really out of luck. The Sun has been very quiet for weeks now with mostly A and B-class activity. We have a numbered sunspot region on the disk (sunspot region 2690) today but this group has already decayed and is now spotless. Solar activity is expected to remain very low in the foreseeable future. It really does feel like we are well on our way to solar minimum...