AR2993/2994: X flare!

[Cmags]

4 hours ago, LunarLights58 said:

These regions, now certainly beyond range of Earth, have lately been chucking out CMEs, almost every couple hours.

So awhile ago I was lurking on this forum and I saw someone throw out the name of theory explaining why more extreme activity happens on the far side, but not so much on the earth-facing solar disc. Did I dream this up, or is there an explanation/theory as to why the more extreme/volatile activity happens when regions are not earth facing? 

[Marcel de Bont]

15 minuten geleden, Cmags zei:

So awhile ago I was lurking on this forum and I saw someone throw out the name of theory explaining why more extreme activity happens on the far side, but not so much on the earth-facing solar disc. Did I dream this up, or is there an explanation/theory as to why the more extreme/volatile activity happens when regions are not earth facing? 

I think it's just our imagination. Same with limb events. Yes we are getting more limb events than earth-facing events but that makes sense. Regions spend a considerable amount of time just behind the limb at the limb or just passed the limb (not to mention we have an east and west limb!) and the real earth-strike zone is maybe 60 degrees (30 degrees west and east of the central meridian) out of the 360 degrees that is the entire Sun. I hope it makes sense and I don't confuse anyone.

There shouldn't be any difference between earth-size and far side activity and if there is I am sure there is a Nobel Prize waiting for someone down the future.

[3gMike]

15 hours ago, Marcel de Bont said:

I think it's just our imagination. Same with limb events. Yes we are getting more limb events than earth-facing events but that makes sense. Regions spend a considerable amount of time just behind the limb at the limb or just passed the limb (not to mention we have an east and west limb!) and the real earth-strike zone is maybe 60 degrees (30 degrees west and east of the central meridian) out of the 360 degrees that is the entire Sun.

I tend to agree. A comparison of ARs 2993 and 2994 makes the point. They were located very close together, so if there were some 'earth-facing' effect it would be reasonable to assume that both ARs would behave similarly, but they did not. However if one just examined data for AR2994 it would seem to support the theory.

[MinYoongi]

I wonder if we will see them a 3rd time.

[3gMike]

18 minutes ago, MinYoongi said:

I wonder if we will see them a 3rd time.

I suspect that 2993 has decayed, but 2994 was still looking very active - so there is some hope that it might return.

[MinYoongi]

It looks huge on farside imagery, has grown alot over the last 24h. But @mozyonce said they always look bigger on the farside images, so i dont want to put all my hopes on it since its another 10 days.

[Solarflaretracker200]

4 hours ago, MinYoongi said:

It looks huge on farside imagery, has grown alot over the last 24h. But @mozyonce said they always look bigger on the farside images, so i dont want to put all my hopes on it since its another 10 days.

Well- if this thing starts flaring again or it looks very interesting… maybe we will be in for a third time around. But I kinda doubt we will get a third time around. 

But hey. You Never know

[SunspotRager93]

Isn’t this not normal for a sunspot region to even survive this long? Or even a full time around the sun? 

[MinYoongi]

18 minutes ago, Solarflaretracker200 said:

Well- if this thing starts flaring again or it looks very interesting… maybe we will be in for a third time around. But I kinda doubt we will get a third time around. 

But hey. You Never know

" if this thing starts flaring again or it looks very interesting" I dont fully understand this sentence, what do you exactly mean? 

 

also, its been growing so we dont know.. interesting  ! Lets watch it for the next 10-11 days

[Sam Warfel]

1 hour ago, SunspotRager93 said:

Isn’t this not normal for a sunspot region to even survive this long? Or even a full time around the sun? 

It’s not too uncommon for big ARs to survive as many as a few full rotations. 

[MinYoongi]

24 minutes ago, Orneno said:

It’s not too uncommon for big ARs to survive as many as a few full rotations. 

True. so i think we could see it again.

[MinYoongi]

It grew another 500 in "strength".

Gong imagery does paint another picture, however.

[Solarflaretracker200]

20 minutes ago, MinYoongi said:

It grew another 500 in "strength".

Gong imagery does paint another picture, however.

But it could be faculae though 🤷‍♀️

Where is Gong imagery? Like where do you find it?

[SunspotRager93]

16 minutes ago, Solarflaretracker200 said:

But it could be faculae though 🤷‍♀️

What is faculae? 

[Sam Warfel]

1 hour ago, SunspotRager93 said:

What is faculae? 

Those white spots you see around some sunspots, or where sunspots used to be. They are also called plages or H-alpha plages. They signal areas of stronger magnetic fields, like sunspots, but weaker than sunspots. Typically they do not flare, and are not nearly as interesting as sunspots. If they are around a sunspot, they often signal that a spot is in a decay phase, or at least not a growth phase, although not always. Faculae are frustrating because they can pretend to be large sunspot groups on farside/STEREO imagery, but when they rotate onto the Earth-facing disk we can see they were just faculae after all, and thus very little flare potential and a bit of a disappointment. That’s why it’s not good to get too hyped up about something on the farside we think is strong before we can actually see if it’s a sunspot. 

[Solarflaretracker200]

19 minutes ago, Orneno said:

H-alpha plages

Wait... those are the same thing? I thought that was something different. 

[MinYoongi]

2 hours ago, Orneno said:

Those white spots you see around some sunspots, or where sunspots used to be. They are also called plages or H-alpha plages. They signal areas of stronger magnetic fields, like sunspots, but weaker than sunspots. Typically they do not flare, and are not nearly as interesting as sunspots. If they are around a sunspot, they often signal that a spot is in a decay phase, or at least not a growth phase, although not always. Faculae are frustrating because they can pretend to be large sunspot groups on farside/STEREO imagery, but when they rotate onto the Earth-facing disk we can see they were just faculae after all, and thus very little flare potential and a bit of a disappointment. That’s why it’s not good to get too hyped up about something on the farside we think is strong before we can actually see if it’s a sunspot. 

But why is there such a difference between gong/stereo pictures (for you @Solarflaretracker200, u asked for the link: ) https://farside.nso.edu/  and http://jsoc.stanford.edu/data/farside/  ? Gong shows a bigger (yesterday showed 3 regions, today only 1.) sunspot, and jsoc.standford shows a HUGE area.

 

We had one as big as that once, it was only a big alpha spot when it rotated on the disc. also correct me if im wrong @mozy or @Orneno but there were no significant farside eruptions from that region right?

[Sam Warfel]

3 hours ago, Solarflaretracker200 said:

Wait... those are the same thing? I thought that was something different. 

Maybe technically it’s different, but at our level of understanding they’re the same? Or maybe they are just the same? I feel like @Vancanneyt Sandersaid they were the same thing once, but I might be mistaken 

1 hour ago, MinYoongi said:

But why is there such a difference between gong/stereo pictures (for you @Solarflaretracker200, u asked for the link: ) https://farside.nso.edu/  and http://jsoc.stanford.edu/data/farside/  ? Gong shows a bigger (yesterday showed 3 regions, today only 1.) sunspot, and jsoc.standford shows a HUGE area.

 

We had one as big as that once, it was only a big alpha spot when it rotated on the disc. also correct me if im wrong @mozy or @Orneno but there were no significant farside eruptions from that region right?

I see no significant farside CMEs except from one just behind the SE limb that’s that bright spot visible on STEREO that we’ve been talking about I think, nothing from AR2934

[MinYoongi]

11 minutes ago, Orneno said:

Maybe technically it’s different, but at our level of understanding they’re the same? Or maybe they are just the same? I feel like @Vancanneyt Sandersaid they were the same thing once, but I might be mistaken 

I see no significant farside CMEs except from one just behind the SE limb that’s that bright spot visible on STEREO that we’ve been talking about I think, nothing from AR2934

Do you mean AR2994? 

 

Hmm, so no cme's from that region could mean its not complex, but it grew alot in the last 3 days. like it went from 1400 strength to now 4500. it gained 1500 yesterday. On Gong it does not look as huge/complex so i'm wondering whats real.

Gong just updated, and now shows 2 regions again.

1 day ago it showed 3 regions, then 1 again, now 2. more areal covered though (yellow map) 

[Sam Warfel]

1 hour ago, MinYoongi said:

Do you mean AR2994? 

Yeah I meant that 

1 hour ago, MinYoongi said:

Hmm, so no cme's from that region could mean its not complex, but it grew alot in the last 3 days. like it went from 1400 strength to now 4500. it gained 1500 yesterday. On Gong it does not look as huge/complex so i'm wondering whats real.

Gong just updated, and now shows 2 regions again.

It must not be too complex with no CMEs, so I’m not too optimistic. If it’s growing, maybe it will develop as it turns towards Earth. But maybe not. 

[MinYoongi]

1 hour ago, Orneno said:

Yeah I meant that 

It must not be too complex with no CMEs, so I’m not too optimistic. If it’s growing, maybe it will develop as it turns towards Earth. But maybe not. 

It grew even more.. like 1000 strength in a day. This is Huge? Why isnt it as huge on Gong? Has anyone an idea or explanation? The yellow map looks way smaller than the one below it.. im so confused?

Could everything around the deep black spot be faculae @Orneno

[3gMike]

4 hours ago, MinYoongi said:

The yellow map looks way smaller than the one below it.. im so confused?

I've overlaid the outline from the lower map onto the upper map

 

I used a high level of transparency in order to retain detail from the upper map. Hopefully, you can see that the features match pretty well. It is just that the lower map is showing the whole area of activity - although I am not sure what was detected in the very small region at the right hand side. The darker area does indicate higher magnetic activity, but is still no guarantee of sunspots.

[MinYoongi]

5 hours ago, 3gMike said:

I've overlaid the outline from the lower map onto the upper map

 

I used a high level of transparency in order to retain detail from the upper map. Hopefully, you can see that the features match pretty well. It is just that the lower map is showing the whole area of activity - although I am not sure what was detected in the very small region at the right hand side. The darker area does indicate higher magnetic activity, but is still no guarantee of sunspots.

Thank you!

Gong already updated by now, showing a big area too. Yesterday it showed 2 regions, now its back to one. I just dont understand why the difference in area on those two maps and i still dont know if there is a difference between the gong and the stanford farside maps, if yes, which one is more accurate etc ... 

So for 3 days the region 2994 seems to be growing extremely rapidly but we see no farside cme's really. What could that mean?

 

And also wondering which one of those two maps here is more accurate

[Patrick P.A. Geryl]

52 minuten geleden, MinYoongi zei:

Thank you!

Gong already updated by now, showing a big area too. Yesterday it showed 2 regions, now its back to one. I just dont understand why the difference in area on those two maps and i still dont know if there is a difference between the gong and the stanford farside maps, if yes, which one is more accurate etc ... 

So for 3 days the region 2994 seems to be growing extremely rapidly but we see no farside cme's really. What could that mean?

 

And also wondering which one of those two maps here is more accurate

In cycle 24 there were several complex sunspots with huge X flare potential… Yet… Nothing happened! And they quickly went down in strength… So that is nothing unusual… 

[MinYoongi]

Just now, Patrick P.A. Geryl said:

In cycle 24 there were several complex sunspots with huge X flare potential… Yet… Nothing happened! And they quickly went down in strength… So that is nothing unusual… 

Thank you for the Answer, Patrick.

Its my first solar cycle observing, so everything is new.

I've never seen such a big Active Region on the Far side so thats interesting for me. The region grew another 400 in strength and got a bit more compact looking at the imagery but I remember everyone saying not to place any bets on those Maps, since theyre not the most accurate. Also its another week for the region to rotate onto the limb and then 3-5 more days until it moves towards the center and i guess a lot can happen in that time so its pretty early now to predict anything right?

Nevertheless, an impressive growth over the last few days which wonders and interests me.