C7.4 solar flare

Monday, 7 December 2020 19:45 UTC

C7.4 solar flare

Solar activity has been fairly boring during the past few days but a surprise solar flare woke us up. A long duration C7.41 solar flare peaked today at 16:32 UTC. Sunspot region 2790 is to blame and that is a sunspot region facing Earth! Long duration solar flares are known to produce coronal mass ejections so the question is... was this an eruptive event?

The answer to that question is a huge yes! It became quickly apparent that this long duration solar flare would be eruptive. A huge amount of coronal dimming was observed which is an excellent  sign that a coronal mass ejection was launched during the event.

Indeed a large coronal mass ejection became visible on STEREO A. We do not have the earth-facing coronagraph imagery yet from SOHO but considering the location of sunspot region 2790 and the extend of the coronal mass ejection on STEREO A we think it is very likely that this coronal mass ejection has an earth-directed component. We will return with more news when the coronagraph imagery from SOHO becomes available.

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