Welcome to the Solar Influences Data Analysis Center (SIDC),
which is the solar physics research department of the Royal Observatory of Belgium.
The SIDC includes the World Data Center for the sunspot index and the
ISES Regional Warning Center Brussels for space weather forecasting.
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INFO FROM SIDC - RWC BELGIUM 2018 Apr 20 12:30UTC The sunspot group which appeared from the behind of the East solar limb yesterday got numbered as Catania sunspot group 78 (NOAA AR 2706). This sunspot group was source of the all (low B-class), flaring activity during last 24 hours. We expect that Catania sunspot group 78 might be the source of the B-class flares and possibly also isolated C-class flare in the following 24 hours. There were no Earth directed CMEs observed since the last report and the solar protons remain at the background level. The in situ observations showed sudden increase of the interplanetary magnetic field magnitude (IMF), solar wind speed, density and temperature at about 23:19 UT yesterday evening. All this indicates arrival of the shock wave, however presently it is still unclear if the shock wave will be followed by the ICME or this is a shock in the solar wind related with the expected arrival of the fast flow. The shock wave was followed by gradual increase of the solar wind speed and IMF. The fast solar wind (up to 515 km/s) and longer intervals of negative values of the Bz component of the IMF (down to -19 nT), resulted in the active to storm geomagnetic conditions reported this morning (local station at Dourbes reported K=5 and NOAA reported Kp=6). The solar wind speed is presently about 480 km/s and the IMF is about 14 nT. If the solar wind speed will continue to increase and the Bz component will show longer intervals with negative values we can expect continuation of the disturbed geomagnetic conditions in the coming hours. |
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