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Thursday 8 March 2012

Latest Solar Flare Activity: Solar and Geophysical Activity Report of 09 Mar 2...

Latest Solar Flare Activity: Solar and Geophysical Activity Report of 09 March 2012

09 March, 2012 solar wind storm, geomagnetic storm, geophysical activity, latest solar, latest solar activity, latest solar flare activity.

Strong Solar Flare
Sunspot 1429 is now in a great geoeffective position for Earth directed Coronal Mass Ejections. This region just produced a strong M6.3 Solar Flare at 03:53 UTC Friday morning. A movie presentation is now shown below. A Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) is now seen in the latest Lasco C2 and STEREO Behind COR2 images. More images will be needed to determine how large of a plasma cloud it is, and if it will be Earth directed.
ALERT: Type II Radio Emission
Begin Time: 2012 Mar 09 0343 UTC
Estimated Velocity: 1285 km/s
Description:
Type II emissions occur in association with eruptions on the sun and typically indicate a coronal mass ejection is associated with a flare event.

Updated 3/9/2012 @ 02:40 UTC
CME Impact / Geomagnetic Storm Subsides
The ACE Spacecraft detected a shock passage and a Geomagnetic Sudden Impulse measuring 58 nT at the Boulder Station was recorded at 11:05 UTC Thursday morning. The Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) caused by the X5.4 Solar Flare did impact Earths geomagnetic field.

Minor Geomagnetic Storming (Kp=5) persisted for many hours today, but the Kp Index is now below the G1 minor storm level. Depending on the Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF), there will be a chance for additional storm flareups over the hours ahead. Visible Aurora will remain possible at very high latitudes.
Bz Update The Bz component of the Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF) has been pointing mostly to the north and this has kept the geomagnetic storm at minor levels thus far. Should the Bz begin to point south for long durations, this may help intensify the storm.
Strong Solar Wind The current Solar Wind speed continues to gradually decrease and is now near 650 km/s, as per the SOHO Spacecraft data. As you can tell by the updated graph below, the solar wind spiked to above 800 km/s when the CME shock swept past SOHO.