A BIG CME IS COMING: Ths morning’s X1-class solar flare hurled a bright CME toward Earth. NASA and NOAA models agree that the storm cloud should reach our planet by the early hours of March 25th. A direct hit could spark strong G3-class geomagnetic storms with mid-latitude auroras in the USA and Europe.

SOHO coronagraphs captured this halo CME heading for Earth on March 23, 2024

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STRONG X-CLASS SOLAR FLARE: The sun just produced a solar flare so strong, it took two sunspots to make it. Improbably, sunspots AR3614 and 3615 exploded in tandem on March 23rd around 0130 UT, directing their fire straight at Earth. A National Solar Observatory telescope in Australia recorded the double blast:

The explosion from AR3614 (top) seemed to rip the fabric of the sun, while AR3615 (bottom) followed close behind with a less violent blast of its own. The same sequence was captured in this movie from NASA’s Solar Dyanamics Observatory.

While this may seem like an incredible coincidence, it probably didn’t happen by chance. Researchers have long known that widely-spaced sunspots can explode in tandem. They’re called “sympathetic solar flares.” Occasionally, magnetic loops in the sun’s corona fasten themselves to distant pairs of sunspots, allowing explosive instabilities to travel from one to the other. This has apparently happened to AR3614 and AR3615.

Some sympathetic flares are so much alike, they are considered to be twins. Today’s double-blast was not a perfect twin, but close enough. It shows that the two sunspots are linked, raising the possibility of more double-flares this weekend. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text.