Sara Housseal ☀️

@snhwx.bsky.social

Space Weather Forecaster ☀️ Meteorologist ⛈️ Applied Physics Graduate Student 📚 Photographer 📸 Nebraska 📍

Fun Fact: Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), the sole provider of coronagraph imagery from L1 along the Sun-Earth line, was originally planned for a 2 year mission in Dec 1995, or 730 days. As of 23 Jan 2025, SOHO is on mission day 10,646! ☀️🛰️

Rendition of SOHO satellite with the Sun in the background. Photo is from ESA.

Nice reminder of how the semantics of active region complexity don't always mean much of anything when it comes to possible flare activity. 3961 & 3964 have been the most complex & likely of flare activity, yet a benign area blasted a long duration M3 flare w/ a southward CME. ☀️

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AR3961 (south center) currently has the best chance for activity with the highest flare probability of all regions on the disk at 45% for M flares & 10% for X flares. This will be the region to keep an eye on over the next few days as any eruption would likely have an Earth directed component. ☀️

Clear skies today with temperatures in the 30s (℉) gave us an opportunity to record an interesting development on Earth's Sun. "Fast-growing sunspot 3964 didn't even exist yesterday," reported Spaceweather .com. "Now it is as big as two Earths and poses a threat for strong flares." #sunspots #sun

The Sun, in white light, as photographed through a safe solar filter. It appears here as a gray circle with several dark blotches -- sunspots -- aligned roughly left to right across the disk. The sunspot in AR (Active Region) 3964 is right of center in the picture. Background is black in this photo taken January 17, 2025 by James Guilford.

Although AR3964 will continue to rotate into a non-favorable position in the event it ever launches a CME, this is still a region to watch as of right now. 💥 After abruptly appearing on the disk, indicating its potential for activity, it just released an M7 flare, no CME. ☀️

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Let's clear up two common misconceptions when it comes to coronal holes (CH). 🧵 First, do not be fool into thinking the size has changed drastically, growing from east to central meridian (CM) and then shrinking from central meridian westward. ☀️

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2025 is the year of trolling and making fools of big news media companies that spread misinformation and clickbait about space weather. I'm 2 for 3 with effectively getting a post deleted. 👊

The fast solar wind from the western most, finger-like extension of the coronal hole is reaching Earth now and should continue to ramp up as the entirety of the coronal hole rotates westward. This could enhance geomagnetic activity over the coming days. ☀️

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In case you come across a bunch of hype about a "big hole in the Sun", it's really not that serious and is a normal part of the solar cycle, as always. Wait until we get to solar minimum and coronal holes take up nearly half of the Earth-facing disk at times. ☀️ Solar Max >>> Solar Min

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As a majority of the regions on the disk continue to decline and/or rotate off with no replenishment, background x-ray flux has dipped into B level. Not completely unusual, but shows how easily activity can change no matter how good or bad things look on any given day. ☀️

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Update on underperforming CME activity: The possible glancing blow CME from the 4th appears to have arrived around 04Z today. Despite providing a decent jump to wind speeds, magnetic field connection has been weak, so G1 has not been reached. 1/2 ☀️

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New G1 Watch for the 6th following analysis of the CME associated w/ the long duration C7 flare from AR3939 on the 4th. While I personally wouldn't expect much of anything from this on its own, the environment is already disturbed, so it wouldn't take much to see G1 conditions. ☀️

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