Region 3590

[cheebee]

stunning!

[Jesterface23]

1 hour ago, MinYoongi said:

Any reason as to why its flaring in particular?

I'd guess it is the strength of the spots and they are fairly close to each other, pretty much visually sharing a penumbra.

[cheebee]

looks like its taking a deep breath

[Chris_Wicklund]

Whomever said it was magnetically caged above makes sense to me. Such strong polarity blocking the CMEs from surfacing. Probably why we saw that X6.3 and other X1s. My hope is that the large spots lower in strength but complexity gets better. Then we might see something. Otherwise it could be trapped across the entire disk and not release anything.

[Marcin Tadych]

1 hour ago, cheebee said:

stunning!

Where did you get it?

[Sam Warfel]

3 hours ago, Open said:

Made a account because i got into the topic few months ago. Region 3590 is very interesting now looking at us.

Greetings from Germany.

Welcome to the forums! It is indeed an interesting AR!

[Adrian Kobyłecki]

How can such a complex region show no activity

[MinYoongi]

Just now, Adrian Kobyłecki said:

How can such a complex region show no activity

it does show alot of activity

[Adrian Kobyłecki]

I see magnetic loops rising rapidly on the SUVI. Doesn't this result in a flare?

Edited February 24 by Adrian Kobyłecki

[MinYoongi]

6 minutes ago, Adrian Kobyłecki said:

I see magnetic loops rising rapidly on the SUVI. Doesn't this result in a flare?

can you maybe show me what loops you mean?

from when to when is "rapid" to you?

maybe @Philalethes knows something

[mozy]

11 minutes ago, Adrian Kobyłecki said:

I see magnetic loops rising rapidly on the SUVI. Doesn't this result in a flare?

That's what I was expecting too, we'll wait and see, but usually when these occur there's way more movement within the whole region, but maybe it can happen here too.

[MinYoongi]

Just now, mozy said:

but usually when these occur there's way more movement within the whole region, but maybe it can happen here too.

Can you tell me more about that?

[cheebee]

1 hour ago, Marcin Tadych said:

Where did you get it?

AIA 094 335 193

on the sdo page

https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/solar-activity/solar-images/sdo.html

took a screenie and cropped it

[Adrian Kobyłecki]

8 minutes ago, MinYoongi said:

 

from when to when is "rapid" to you?

 

visible on SUVI from 23:00 below the region

[MinYoongi]

24 minutes ago, Adrian Kobyłecki said:

visible on SUVI from 23:00 below the region

thank you adrian  

[Jesterface23]

Whatever the pulsing is from the large positive polarity spot is interesting.

 

[Aten]

13 hours ago, SpaceWeather5464 said:

Magnetic caging 

NASA’s SDO Reveals How Magnetic Cage on the Sun Stopped Solar Eruption - NASA

Is there an easy way to tell how strong the magnetic cage above a particular sunspot is? Other than wait for it to flare and see if there is a CME?

Edited February 25 by Aten

[MeteoLatvia]

AR 3590 looks very great now, in my opinion. I only wonder - why the region is become quiet in terms of flaring - no more even a low-end M-class flares? Is there any explanation to this?

[Jesterface23]

Now that the strong positive polarity spot has magnetic loops to the eastern side of the region, I think all we need is one more decent flare from the center and that might trigger one good big eruption from the entire region. Too bad the spot doesn't have magnetic loops connected to the center negative polarity spots.

That's just my gut feeling.

[Parabolic]

1 hour ago, Aten said:

Is there an easy way to tell how strong the magnetic cage above a particular sunspot is? Other than wait for it to flare and see if there is a CME?

From what I know there isn't a definite answer. We can speculate based on the history of this region so far or compare it to other regions that had similar behavior. Even then there's plenty of uncertainty. My guess is that the leader spot is responsible for the lack of solar storms being released since there's no other spots in this region that can even begine to compare in size.

[Philalethes]

8 hours ago, mozy said:

That's what I was expecting too, we'll wait and see, but usually when these occur there's way more movement within the whole region, but maybe it can happen here too.

8 hours ago, MinYoongi said:

Can you tell me more about that?

44 minutes ago, Aten said:

Is there an easy way to tell how strong the magnetic cage above a particular sunspot is? Other than wait for it to flare and see if there is a CME?

27 minutes ago, Parabolic said:

From what I know there isn't a definite answer. We can speculate based on the history of this region so far or compare it to other regions that had similar behavior. Even then there's plenty of uncertainty. My guess is that the leader spot is responsible for the lack of solar storms being released since there's no other spots in this region that can even begine to compare in size.

I would think that these are related. In the 171 Å imagery in particular when the loops extend upward, but even if the 195 Å imagery if the loops go high enough, this would be an indication of more material being trapped by that particular set of field lines higher up, which would be a sign that there's more overall flux in that part of the field without there necessarily being more complexity.

So perhaps an "easy" sign to look for is such large and coherent loop structures, as opposed to the more chaotic loop structures you typically see in more complex regions, where the loops are splayed out in more directions. Not sure whether that's a valid heuristic or not though, but it could be something to look out for in the future, in case we see similar confinement of large flares in similar situations.

As a separate note, you can check the total unsigned flux of the region here (that's the record for this particular region, total unsigned flux is the second column from the right, in maxwells) using the same data series as in the paper Parabolic posted (this, for reference). As I suspected it never reached 1e+23 Mx, but it was quite close at its peak of 8e+22 Mx around Feb 21-22, still hovering around 7-7.5e+22 Mx; all around the threshold identified as critical for caging in the paper, but still in what they call moderate, with relatively equal chances for eruption or confinement:

Quote

If the AR has a moderate magnetic flux (larger than 3.0 x 10^22 Mx and smaller than 1.0 x 10^23 Mx), the likelihood of eruptive and confined events appears to be almost equal.

But as one can surmise, and see from the associated plot too, there's definitely a lesser density of eruptive flares in the very upper part of that moderate range, so I'm guessing we are indeed seeing an example of a region where such confinement is relevant.

However, I did also look at the total unsigned flux of some of the other regions currently on the disc, and somewhat surprisingly (at least to me) even the small regions on the left (3591, 3592, 3594) have total fluxes of ~1-1.5e+22 Mx, so the range of total fluxes in active regions that are interesting to us probably doesn't span much more than a couple orders of magnitude, meaning that the difference between a more moderate region (e.g. 4-5e+22 Mx) and the stronger ones at ≥1e+23 Mx is perhaps more significant than I thought.

[MinYoongi]

This might be interesting for you @Philalethes since it seems to confirm what you suspected.

[hamateur 1953]

Incredibly this region is still growing. Presently the leading positive may soon encroach on the smaller negative.  It sits at around 1500 millionths now with small delta in trailing negative that I can see.  Not to change the topic flow here but we might soon see it stop shooting blanks  as Tamitha Skov noted it’s disappointing tendencies lately. 

[Misaka]

I find it quite interesting that 3590 and 3576 are on exactly the opposite side of the sun. This means that as soon as 3590 is out of our view, 3576 (or what's left of it) comes back into our view.

[Open]

The delta is to small 3590 has to go rapid the cme‘s not even released at X 6.3 means if cme released it will be huge. Today would be the most destructive day to do so because were perfectly earth facing.

Edited February 25 by Open