Sunspot region 2205, filament eruptions

Sunday, 9 November 2014 13:18 UTC

Sunspot region 2205

Sunspot region 2205 showed minor signs of decay since our last update mainly among the trailer sunspots where it lost penumbral area and some spots. The delta sunspots remain intact but are trending away from the opposite polarity sunspots. It is still a Beta-Gamma-Delta sunspot region and complex enough for an M-class (R1-R2) event but if it continues to decay the chances will get lower.

M-class flare probability for the coming 24 hours: 50% chance
X-class flare probability for the coming 24 hours: 10% chance

All the other sunspot regions on the disk are unremarkable and unlikely to produce strong solar flares. Any future solar flares will very likely be centered around sunspot region 2205.

Filament and prominence eruptions

A filament eruption was observed this morning off the NW quadrant which occured around 09:00 UTC. Coronagraph imagery from SOHO/LASCO shows a coronal mass ejection from this event but imagery is still limited. Based on the trajactory of the ejecta as seen on SDO, we do not expect this event to have an earth-directed component.

Another gorgeous event occurred right after this filament eruption just after 10:00 UTC: a large prominence erupted on the SE limb. It will not have any effect on Earth as most of the ejecta (if not all) looked to have fallen back onto the Sun and it also didn't occur in a geo-effective position. It is however a very nice eruption to watch!

The video below shows the two eruptions. First the filament eruption in the NW quadrant followed by the prominence eruption on the SE limb.

Images and video: NASA SDO.