M2.1 solar flare and a partial halo CME

Friday, 5 May 2023 17:44 UTC

M2.1 solar flare and a partial halo CME

As you might have noticed... there has been a lot of M-class activity the past few days. Unfortunately the M3.9 solar flare that took place yesterday did not produce an earth-directed eruption as the halo outline was determined to come from another far side eruption. So we are going to ignore all of these solar flares except for one: the M2.1 flare that peaked at 08:01 UTC today.

The M2.1 solar flare was a long duration event which produced a partial halo coronal mass ejection. It is estimated that this coronal mass ejection could arrive as a glancing blow late on Sunday, 7 May or early on Monday, 8 May. We do not expect a lot of geomagnetic activity from this eruption due to the faint partial halo outline but it is still worth keeping an eye on the solar wind data as you never know for sure. Talking about keeping an eye on things... the same can be said about sunspot regions 3296 and 3297 as they remain active and are capable of producing more M-class solar flares as they rotate towards the center of the earth-facing solar disk.

Thank you for reading this article! Did you have any trouble with the technical terms used in this article? Our help section is the place to be where you can find in-depth articles, a FAQ and a list with common abbreviations. Still puzzled? Just post on our forum where we will help you the best we can! Never want to miss out on a space weather event or one of our news articles again? Subscribe to our mailing list, follow us on Twitter and Facebook and download the SpaceWeatherLive app for Android and iOS!

Latest news

Support SpaceWeatherLive.com!

A lot of people come to SpaceWeatherLive to follow the Sun's activity or if there is aurora to be seen, but with more traffic comes higher server costs. Consider a donation if you enjoy SpaceWeatherLive so we can keep the website online!

SpaceWeatherLive Pro
Support SpaceWeatherLive with our merchandise
Check out our merchandise

Latest alerts

Get instant alerts!

Space weather facts

Last X-flare2024/12/08X2.2
Last M-flare2024/12/26M7.3
Last geomagnetic storm2024/12/17Kp5+ (G1)
Spotless days
Last spotless day2022/06/08
Monthly mean Sunspot Number
November 2024152.5 -13.9
December 2024119.3 -33.2
Last 30 days122 -35.7

This day in history*

Solar flares
12001X1.02
22024M7.3
32011M3.43
42024M3.0
52001M2.64
DstG
11988-64G1
22014-57G1
31984-54G1
42002-49G1
52022-48G2
*since 1994

Social networks