AR 13242

[NEAurora]

Now that 3234 has performed her swan song on the limb, is it worth looking ahead at the 3242 region?  The spot itself doesn't look all that impressive (Beta), but it has been producing some brighter flares on its eastern side, and it doesn't look quite as stable and clean as the other spots on the sun.  In any case, as far as I can tell, given its lower latitude and current location, it currently looks like the best opportunity for Earth directed action over the next week, so I figure it might be worth some discussion here.

 

 

[Philalethes]

It has been flaring steadily in the C-range since it first appeared I believe, almost M-flared yesterday. Also, if I'm not mistaken it looks like it just had an M-flare as per SUVI.

Doesn't look very complex, though. Can't say I have too much hope for it, but not much else to look at on the disc currently.

[mozy]

Sure is an interesting region with how much it's constantly popping, if this region starts evolving & growing I believe we could be see some serious activity with how it's behaving atm lol.

[AurorahunterPA]

1 hour ago, mozy said:

Sure is an interesting region with how much it's constantly popping, if this region starts evolving & growing I believe we could be see some serious activity with how it's behaving atm lol.

I hope something develops before earth facing because I missed my chance on the 28th. It was raining. 😭😭😭😭 I agree it looks like one of the nicer spots coming onto the disk. 

[hamateur 1953]

You should move to western washinton state USA. I can almost guarantee you will miss every single opportunity! 

5 hours ago, AurorahunterPA said:

I hope something develops before earth facing because I missed my chance on the 28th. It was raining. 😭😭😭😭 I agree it looks like one of the nicer spots coming onto the disk. 

🤣🤣

Edited March 4, 2023 by hamateur 1953

[Alfonso Abrego]

Hello, the truth is that I have learned a lot from your comments, I think that the spot 3242 we have to be monitoring it because despite being BETA it has had important eruptions, like today's class M and constituted by 16 spots.

[Philalethes]

Always nice when the flare changes its mind about stopping and flares some more.

Also, the 94 Å view is apparently temporarily out of service due to being haunted by a ghost:

[MinYoongi]

Is the current impulsive M5 flare from this region? (suvi has not updated yet)

ah, its not. sorry. 

[Philalethes]

8 hours ago, MinYoongi said:

Is the current impulsive M5 flare from this region? (suvi has not updated yet)

ah, its not. sorry. 

As you probably found out, it was from 3243; same with the latest flare, which seems to have been eruptive (although there's a lot of footage missing from SUVI and LASCO). I guess no one wants to open a thread for it due to how close it is to the limb at this point.

Edited March 6, 2023 by Philalethes Bythos

[Mace Hornbrook]

I think I see a delta in this spot now in the middle. Does this region have potential for X flares?

[Philalethes]

2 minutes ago, Mace Hornbrook said:

I think I see a delta in this spot now in the middle. Does this region have potential for X flares?

There's still quite a bit of visible separation between the penumbrae, as also evidenced by the significantly lighter color of the penumbrae right next to the spots in the direction of each other, so I would not say this is a delta for the time being. The overall configuration isn't particularly complex either, so I'd be surprised if it did X-flare, but it's certainly not impossible given that it did a bit of M-flaring yesterday, it's hard to tell what's going on under the surface.

[Philalethes]

3 hours ago, Mace Hornbrook said:

I think I see a delta in this spot now in the middle.

Now a delta has formed there by virtue of the new negative spot, so that might signify potential for activity.

Edited March 6, 2023 by Philalethes Bythos

[Hagen72]

For better understanding for me: 

You Talk about the both red dots and the blue inside the green field?

I am new here

[Alfonso Abrego]

Hello, excuse me, I have a doubt, why do you think that despite having a stable magnetic classification such as BETA, they have an activity as if it were quite unstable activity?
Sorry, for the inconvenience but I notice that you have a lot of experience in this area. 

[Philalethes]

2 hours ago, Alfonso Abrego said:

Hello, excuse me, I have a doubt, why do you think that despite having a stable magnetic classification such as BETA, they have an activity as if it were quite unstable activity?

If you're talking to me, then I didn't really say that it was "quite unstable"; I just pointed out that a delta had formed (so the updated classification for the time being would be beta-delta), and combined with the fact that it did have some mild M-flares yesterday, that could mean potential for activity. It could also just fizzle out into nothing.

[NEAurora]

27 minutes ago, Philalethes Bythos said:

 It could also just fizzle out into nothing.

Now that it’s almost directly Earth facing, this is my expectation.  Also, the flaring from this spot has subsided a lot for the time being.

[Vancanneyt Sander]

3 uren geleden, Hagen72 zei:

For better understanding for me: 

You Talk about the both red dots and the blue inside the green field?

I am new here

Welcome to the forum.
On the magnetogram we have positive polarity spots in blue and negative polarity spots in red. Weak fields are green (positive) and yellow (negative). Each spot has its own polarity (negative or positive). So, a delta spot is a sunspot of opposite polarity within the penumbral area of the other spot. So here we have in the trailing part of the region (in the middle) a positive polarity (blue) spot that's inside the penumbral area of the negative polarity spots (red).

23 uren geleden, Philalethes Bythos zei:

Also, the 94 Å view is apparently temporarily out of service due to being haunted by a ghost:

GOES took it literally to "Make some noise" for some nice activity on the Sun 😉

[Philalethes]

43 minutes ago, Vancanneyt Sander said:

So, a delta spot is a sunspot of opposite polarity within the penumbral area of the other spot. So here we have in the trailing part of the region (in the middle) a positive polarity (blue) spot that's inside the penumbral area of the negative polarity spots (red).

I think this might be a bit confusing for some people, because they might start to think of deltas as exclusively referring to areas where one spot is significantly smaller than the other and seemingly "within" the penumbra associated with the other. The only criterion for being a delta in that regard is that the spots share the same penumbra, and since penumbrae of different polarities can't be discerned from an intensitygram you can easily have deltas where neither spot is really "within" the penumbra of the other, but simply so close that their penumbrae appear as one; this is typically the case when the spots in question are of similar size and strength. In fact, I would say that precisely that is the case here, as the positive spot isn't really "inside" the penumbra of the negative spot, they each visibly have their own penumbrae, they're simply so close together that their penumbrae appear as one, and hence they share a single penumbra.

4 hours ago, Hagen72 said:

For better understanding for me: 

You Talk about the both red dots and the blue inside the green field?

I am new here

As per the above and what Vancanneyt Sander correctly points out, it's a combination of looking at both the magnetogram (the colorized version of this is the one with the red/yellow and blue/green colors, but there's also a version that's just black and white, you can find all of them on SDO's "Data" page, here), as well as the intensitygram, which just shows the spots and penumbrae without indicating polarity. You can see the two different ones here on this website for each active region, e.g. here for this region. Essentially what you do is check if there are any spots of opposite polarity as seen on the magnetogram (either colorized or not) whose penumbrae as seen on the intensitygram are pushed together so closely that they appear as one.

To do this you can e.g. switch back and forth between the two images (intensitygram and magnetogram) as seen on the site or downloaded from SDO, or simply note which spots have opposite polarity on the magnetogram first and then look carefully at the intensitygram to see if their penumbrae appear as a single penumbra. Personally I wrote a script to make a gif that transitions between the two on a continuous basis so I can take a good look at both, which looks like this (I upload such a gif of whatever area I'm looking at automatically to a permanent Drive link here that you can look at yourself):

Here I've highlighted the delta with the black rectangle; note how the negative (the red one, at the bottom) spot's umbra (the inner darkest area, that's totally black for the large spots) has now become rather light and small, so if that disappears there would no longer be a delta there (deltas can sometimes be quite transient and short-lived, dying out just as quickly as they form).

Edited March 6, 2023 by Philalethes Bythos

[Ester89]

1 hour ago, Philalethes Bythos said:

I think this might be a bit confusing for some people, because they might start to think of deltas as exclusively referring to areas where one spot is significantly smaller than the other and seemingly "within" the penumbra associated with the other. The only criterion for being a delta in that regard is that the spots share the same penumbra, and since penumbrae of different polarities can't be discerned from an intensitygram you can easily have deltas where neither spot is really "within" the penumbra of the other, but simply so close that their penumbrae appear as one; this is typically the case when the spots in question are of similar size and strength. In fact, I would say that precisely that is the case here, as the positive spot isn't really "inside" the penumbra of the negative spot, they each visibly have their own penumbrae, they're simply so close together that their penumbrae appear as one, and hence they share a single penumbra.

As per the above and what Vancanneyt Sander correctly points out, it's a combination of looking at both the magnetogram (the colorized version of this is the one with the red/yellow and blue/green colors, but there's also a version that's just black and white, you can find all of them on SDO's "Data" page, here), as well as the intensitygram, which just shows the spots and penumbrae without indicating polarity. You can see the two different ones here on this website for each active region, e.g. here for this region. Essentially what you do is check if there are any spots of opposite polarity as seen on the magnetogram (either colorized or not) whose penumbrae as seen on the intensitygram are pushed together so closely that they appear as one.

To do this you can e.g. switch back and forth between the two images (intensitygram and magnetogram) as seen on the site or downloaded from SDO, or simply note which spots have opposite polarity on the magnetogram first and then look carefully at the intensitygram to see if their penumbrae appear as a single penumbra. Personally I wrote a script to make a gif that transitions between the two on a continuous basis so I can take a good look at both, which looks like this (I upload such a gif of whatever area I'm looking at automatically to a permanent Drive link here that you can look at yourself):

Here I've highlighted the delta with the black rectangle; note how the negative (the red one, at the bottom) spot's umbra (the inner darkest area, that's totally black for the large spots) has now become rather light and small, so if that disappears there would no longer be a delta there (deltas can sometimes be quite transient and short-lived, dying out just as quickly as they form).

Thank you very much for your explanation!  It is very helpful for new people and beginners like me!

[Hagen72]

Danke, also lag ich richtig mit meiner Vermutung. Ich habe mir und meiner Frau zum 50. Geburtstag eine Reise nach Lappland gegönnt und daher ein berechtigtes Interesse an aktiven Regionen. Am Mittwoch geht's los.

Btw: Heute gegen ca. 10 Uhr gab es einen CME mit Halo Typ IV. Wie hoch schätzt Ihr die Warscheinlichkeit eines Erd-impacts ein?

[Sam Warfel]

1 hour ago, Hagen72 said:

Danke, also lag ich richtig mit meiner Vermutung. Ich habe mir und meiner Frau zum 50. Geburtstag eine Reise nach Lappland gegönnt und daher ein berechtigtes Interesse an aktiven Regionen. Am Mittwoch geht's los.

Btw: Heute gegen ca. 10 Uhr gab es einen CME mit Halo Typ IV. Wie hoch schätzt Ihr die Warscheinlichkeit eines Erd-impacts ein?

Please use English on the forums, thanks! 
Full halos are a good sign, but this one has the halo on the far side of the sun, not the earth-facing side, so it might not impact Earth. 
That being said, a minor glancing blow could still give you a good show in Lapland, it’s so far north! Keep your eyes open and follow the data on spaceweatherlive.com

[Jesterface23]

There was an Earth directed CME with a very far on the edge glancing blow from 3248 or 3243. Fairly slow and unlikely to arrive.

[Hagen72]

Why is todays 3242 classified to Alpha? I can see two polarities.🤔

Ah, is changed current back to Beta.

:Warum wird die heutige 3242 als Alpha eingestuft? Ich sehe zwei Polaritäten.🤔"

22 minutes ago, Hagen72 said:

Warum wird die heutige 3242 als Alpha eingestuft? Ich sehe zwei Polaritäten. 🤔

 

[hamateur 1953]

@MinYoongihas remarked that the west limb is actually The Limb Of Disappointment.  Others have noted that this is also where sunspots really do their best work in the M and X regions.   With her permission the east limb be designated as the Limb Of Hope.  We await a formal decree patiently.  Mike/Hagrid. 

On 3/4/2023 at 4:49 AM, NEAurora said:

Now that 3234 has performed her swan song on the limb, is it worth looking ahead at the 3242 region?  The spot itself doesn't look all that impressive (Beta), but it has been producing some brighter flares on its eastern side, and it doesn't look quite as stable and clean as the other spots on the sun.  In any case, as far as I can tell, given its lower latitude and current location, it currently looks like the best opportunity for Earth directed action over the next week, so I figure it might be worth some discussion here.

 

 

 

[Hagen72]

5 Minutes ago the 3242 was for a short time classified als Beta Gamma Delta. 

Edited March 7, 2023 by Hagen72