This is the sun in ultra HD, in all its magnificence.
Never before in history have we been able to see it so clearly in such detail.
Astronomers since time began
have looked up at the sky and wondered.
Galileo even drew the sunspots he saw.
We have technology at our fingertips that Galileo himself would envy.
This is a sunspot
It's not super interesting at first glance
Solar Flare probability
This shows us there is 24% chance of some sort of solar activity, and
3% chance of an M flare off this 03 region, or 2% chance off region 02.
The X-class Coronal Mass Ejections are the most exciting to watch!
SDO Magnetogram
This gives us a look at the polarity of the surface fo the sun.
Since we are solar minimum still, just emerging, it is very quiet.
A closer look
At the negative and positive polarities of the region.
Multiple wavelengths
You can see here AIA 171, 211, & 304
There was an event
It was small and these go mostly unnoticed but if you are a Solar Watcher like me you will find this interesting! You can see the latest events on SolarSoft and I noticed two of the larger in the sequence were an A7.2
All of this information disappears and keeping track of solar flares in 2012 was a massive task. And if I didn't keep track of them, who would? There are others I follow on youtube but there are truly only a handful of people on the whole planet who actually pay attention to this. Now I have the timestamp information for solar Event 6 on this list and can cross reference imagery to see what happened.
Just a small A7.2 coronal mass ejection.
So, we know that this region has been spitting small solar flares. Nothing to worry about.
For comparison I leave you with this GIF
from April 2012 when the sun was more active.
Heading towards 2024/2025 there will
be much more solar activity to see!
