M4.4 solar flare

Saturday, 1 April 2017 22:37 UTC

M4.4 solar flare

Not a prank! We just had the first M-class solar flare since November last year!

It was an M4.42 solar flare (R1-minor) peaking at 21:48 UTC from sunspot region 2644 in the north-western quadrant of the Sun. Note that this solar flare is not from sunspot region 2645 that seemed more complex and faces Earth today! Sunspot region 2644 is at N14W53 not exactly facing Earth but we are happy anyway... we finally have an M-class solar flare this year!

First signs show that this solar flare indeed eruptive (it launched a coronal mass ejection) but the ejecta looks like it is heading well north and west pretty much away from Earth. Of course we need to wait some time before we get updated coronagraph imagery from SOHO and only then we can make a final conclusion so keep your eyes on this website for our final analysis which we will likely post tomorrow! Below we have an animation showing the eruptive nature of this solar flare. Imagine that the Earth would only be the size of a few pixels in the image below. Solar flares are powerful!

⇧ SDO/AIA 211 Angstrom running difference animation showing how eruptive the M4.4 solar flare is. Source: SIDC.

Any mentioned solar flare in this article has a scaling factor applied by the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), the reported solar flares are 42% smaller than for the science quality data. The scaling factor has been removed from our archived solar flare data to reflect the true physical units.

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!

23%
Support SpaceWeatherLive with our merchandise
Check out our merchandise

Latest alerts

Get instant alerts!

Space weather facts

Last X-flare2024/03/28X1.1
Last M-flare2024/03/29M3.2
Last geomagnetic storm2024/03/25Kp5 (G1)
Spotless days
Last spotless day2022/06/08
Monthly mean Sunspot Number
February 2024124.7 +1.7

This day in history*

Solar flares
12001X2.45
22014X1.45
32023X1.2
42024M3.2
52001M3.13
ApG
1199928G2
2200337G1
3201328G1
4200122G1
5199820G1
*since 1994

Social networks