Coronal hole faces Earth, G1 watch

Tuesday, 22 October 2019 14:34 UTC

Coronal hole faces Earth, G1 watch

A large coronal hole is facing our planet today. Most of you might remember this coronal hole as it is the same coronal hole that faced our planet on 28 August and 24 September. This coronal hole has always been a reliable source for geomagnetic storm activity a few days later. What can we expect this time around?

Let's find out! The size of this coronal hole seems to be fairly similar to the size that it had during the previous rotation. Based on that fact, the geomagnetic storms caused by this coronal hole back in August and September and the data from STEREO Ahead we can conclude that minor G1 geomagnetic storm conditions are likely after the high speed solar wind stream arrives. The Co-rotating Interaction Region (CIR) ahead of the high speed solar wind stream is likely to arrive at Earth on Thursday, 24 October. The NOAA SWPC thinks this as well and has already issued a minor G1 geomagnetic storm watch for Thursday, 24 October. The effects of the high speed solar wind stream should last well into Friday and perhaps Saturday as well. Charge your camera batteries! If you are at a high enough latitude it looks like you are in for some nice auroral activity!

Live northern lights YouTube stream

Last Saturday I decided to try something new. I put a camera on my balcony and filmed the northern lights and streamed it to our YouTube channel in real time. While the website and our webmaster originate from Belgium, yours truly resides in Swedish Lapland and from my balcony I can occasionally see some nice northern lights. I tested my live streaming equipment on Saturday and when there was some aurora to be seen I decided to go online. It wasn't the best aurora display ever observed but all of your positive reactions were very nice to see! I plan to do this more often whenever time allows, the weather cooperates and of course when there is some aurora activity. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel (bet you never heard that before) if you'd like to be notified whenever we upload a video or start a live stream. Below you can watch our first live stream that we aired on Saturday evening. Thanks!

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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