Large Solar Flare - X17.2 20031028

• by Mjtbarrett

  Artman40 spotted this and described it as a "very active region." SOHO recorded two flares from this region, an X 17.2 and an X 10.0! http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/2003_10_28/ has videos and analysis. In the text it states that the X 17.2 was the second largest flare ever recorded by SOHO.
  Solarmonitor for the day (28/10/2003) has this: http://www.solarmonitor.org/full_disk.php?date=20031028&type=smdi_maglc&indexnum=1 (ie no mention of the x17.2 flare) but if you move on to the 29th, the X10.0 flare does rate a mention 😃

  It pays to be careful with the timings, it seems, because the image noted by artman40 says "no" to the "major flare in the next 12 hours" flag!

  The region is very active indeed 😃 It also looks like it exhibits a double polarity line separation as mentioned in @pahiggins' latest blog here: http://blog.sunspotter.org/

  Nice catch artman40 😃

  Posted March 5, 2014 12:10 AM

• by Mjtbarrett

  Serendipitously, artman40 came across this same region dated the day before: http://talk.sunspotter.org/#/subjects/ASZ0000433
  Interesting to see the changes develop 😃

  Posted March 5, 2014 12:43 AM

• by pahiggins

  There has been a ton of research on the events of the 28 Oct-2 Nov 2003 as you can imagine. Just type 'halloween storm' into the search box on http://ads.harvard.edu/

  Here is an interesting 'nugget' (a small research project) on comparing two recent sunspot groups to the ones that emerged in 2003: http://sprg.ssl.berkeley.edu/~tohban/wiki/index.php/The_Halloween_Flares_and_Large-Scale_Correlations

  strange parallels... It could always happen again!

  Posted March 5, 2014 2:16 AM