Where is this site's sunspot/active region data coming from?

[DanicaShardae201]

Hello friends,

I'm helping with a sounding rocket campaign that will be viewing a solar flare. It's important for us to have the most recent observational data as soon as possible. Where do you all get your active region data regarding which one is flaring and what regions are numbered?

Thanks

[hamateur 1953]

I’m gonna tag the experts here @Sam Warfel @Vancanneyt Sanderand @Marcel de Bont  one of them should be able to answer your question although its late in Europe  I would just say SWPC space weather prediction center in Boulder CO but you may need more than this.  The activity on the identified regions on this site are updated every hour btw.  My guess is the east limb incoming presently unidentified regions will be your best bet in the next three days or so.  Our baseline solar flux is continuing to climb from a low point. A good sign. 

Edited April 5 by hamateur 1953

[DanicaShardae201]

Thanks. Yes we're very excited about the eastern limb active region that's been active today. That might be our primary target for the next week. So far I find a browser summary of solarsoft info which has been helpful, but I like to have as many sources as possible.

[Christopher Shriver]

For non-critical day-to-day informational updates, I use https://www.solen.info/solar/ as it keeps things "plain" - SWPC(NOAA/NASA) on the other hand has its own process for numbering and observing. Check this: https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/links.html It's a sort of "choose your own organization" deal as Europe, Asia, and the Americas have their own space politics and safety regulations, spread across dozens of governments, offering unique collaborative possibilities.

By "non-critical" I mean to say that information we use is not particularly useful for rocket science, but I see the overlap of concern: Knowledge of active regions and elevated probability for flares while the active regions are Earth-facing. It takes a particular configuration and general activity to empirically forecast a chance of a powerful flare, but the surface of the Sun is highly unpredictable and we often get "duds" or "surprises". It's a real "feel" thing, so keep a lookout for beta-gamma-delta or anti-hale regions.

We tend to highlight a complex, large sunspot whenever/wherever present on the Earth-facing side of the Sun. Through that, we engage in topical discussion and express ideas or our unique observations of activity surrounding the spot; this is sort of a "bed of science" rather than a signal-booster for technological or operational affairs(with a small exception for the HAM users here, who do engage in technical discourse) and while I am confident in the studious nature of the community here to figure things out, we can only yearn for an algorithm or broad method for preceding knowledge of any given high-output flare/CME.

tl;dr If there's a juicy spot, you will hear about it. Activity = chance of aurora = the "basis of enthusiasm" here. Hope this helps in some way; the process for forecasting is shapeless, as of yet.

Edit: SDO and SOHO are the two primary satellites I use for all Solar observations; DSCOVR, ACE, and GOES for SEM(Satellite Environment Monitoring). I sometimes look at PROBA-2 if I want motion sickness from a still image.

Edit 2: The answer is a couple of clicks away from whatever graph or image it is you are viewing. SWL places a watermark with credit on the images from this website.

Edited April 6 by Christopher Shriver
More info, always more info

[Vancanneyt Sander]

15 uren geleden, DanicaShardae201 zei:

Hello friends,

I'm helping with a sounding rocket campaign that will be viewing a solar flare. It's important for us to have the most recent observational data as soon as possible. Where do you all get your active region data regarding which one is flaring and what regions are numbered?

Thanks

GOES data from SWPC
Region numbering is done by SWPC
Which region is flaring we have an algorithm in place at SWL to find a matching AR