Coronal mass ejection arrival

Thursday, 19 November 2015 01:02 UTC

Coronal mass ejection arrival

A shock in the solar wind was observed yesterday around 19:30 UTC, which was likely a glancing blow of the coronal mass ejection related to a filament eruption on 16 November.

The total strength of the IMF (Bt) increased to 12nT with only a minor jump in the solar wind speed to around 450 km/s. The direction of the IMF (Bz) went southward around -10nT for a while. The total strength of the IMF (Bt) is now already back at 6nT which is an average value, indicating this was likely nothing more than a shock passage and the core of the coronal mass ejection didn't reach Earth.

The Wing Kp reached active geomagnetic conditions (Kp4) and the NOAA SWPC reported minor G1 geomagnetic storm activity. Short lived but strong aurora displays were reported from Scotland where Kenneth Muir from Aurora UK took this amazing image.

Enhanced auroral activity remains likely in the hours ahead, as also a coronal hole solar wind stream is expected to cause an enhanced solar wind environment at Earth.

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.

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