C1 solar flare and CME, glancing blow possible

Tuesday, 1 December 2020 19:11 UTC

A coronal mass ejection (cloud of solar plasma ejected by the Sun) became visible on both STEREO and SOHO coronagraph imagery. We focus our attention on the imagery coming from SOHO which is a space craft that looks at coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from Earth's point of view. Surprisingly, we see a partial halo coronal mass ejection with the bulk of the coronal mass ejection heading well north-east of us but there are faint shock signatures to be found expanding to the north, west and partially south of the coronagraph. This could mean that this coronal mass ejection has a chance to deliver a glancing blow to our magnetosphere. It is not the fastest coronal mass ejection ever recorded as you might expect from a C1 solar flare and the cloud of solar plasma shouldn't cause a major impact here at Earth but nonetheless something to watch out for as we are moderately confident that we could see a shock signature passing DSCOVR and our planet. With a travel time of around three days we conclude that a minor CME impact can not be ruled out this Friday which would be 4 December. High latitude sky watchers should be alert around that date for possible enhanced auroral displays.