Increased Solar Activity As We Head Into March



   Today we are seeing an increase in solar activity as a few new sunspots are rotating over the Eastern limb into a more Earth facing position.  This increase gets kicked off with a C1.9 Flare @ 15:11 UTC  and a C1.6 flare @ 18:47 UTC with both C flares coming from the eastern limb located around N08E88. Normally we would not be making much fuss over a couple of C flares, but these two C flare have caught our attention for a few reasons. One, they come after a dry period of no solar flares over the B range for the last week, with last C flare being on Feb 24, 2013 and Two, we have been anticipating the arrival of these new regions as well as the return of old sunspot 1670. All these regions that are about to rotate over the eastern limb have remained active while in the backside of the solar disk and have shown some increase in size. How complex they are or if they remain active while in a direct Earth facing position is yet to be seen in the days ahead. As many have noticed, we are seeing a trend in sunspots becoming non active when they turn into a Earth facing position, only to see them regain their complexity once they near the solar western limb and begin their rotation onto the backside of the solar disk. Image Credit: SDO



Image Credit: Solen

   On top of these new sunspot regions we are watching, we have both Sunspot 1682 and Sunspot 1683 that have a 'beta-gamma' magnetic field. These two sunspot regions harbor energy for a M class flares.