SUPER-SYMPATHETIC SOLAR FLARE: Four solar flares at once? Believe it. During the early hours of April 23rd, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory watched four regions on the sun separated by hundreds of thousands of kilometers explode simultaneously. Play the movie and pay attention to the circled areas:
The quadruple blast included three sunspots (small circles) and a magnetic filament (big circle). The filament eruption is more obvious in this 304 Å movie.
Events like this are called "sympathetic solar flares." Sympathetic flares are pairs of explosions that occur almost simultaneously in different active regions. The widely-separated regions appear to be unrelated to one another but, in fact, they are linked by nearly-invisible magnetic loops in the sun's corona. Instabilities can rapidly travel from one to another, creating a chain reaction of explosions.
Today's sympathetic flare was not a simple pair but a full-fledged quartet, making it super-sympathetic. So much of the sun was involved, it's likely that at least some of the debris will be Earth-directed.
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FIRST CME HAS ARRIVED: The first of six CMEs hurled toward Earth by giant sunspot AR3664 just hit Earth's magnetic field. This could be a 'Cannibal CME' composed of two or three individual storm clouds--or simply the first of six. Either way, it looks like a big hit, setting the stage for NOAA's predicted severe (G4-class) geomagnetic storm. Stay tuned! CME impact alerts: SMS Text
UPDATE--SIX CMEs HURLED TOWARD EARTH: The number of CMEs heading for Earth keeps increasing. The total is now six following this morning's X3.9-class flare from giant sunspot AR3664. All six storm clouds are captured in this time-lapse movie from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO):
The two bright objects are Jupiter (left) and Venus (right). The CMEs will miss those planets and hit Earth instead.
According to a NOAA forecast model, the first three CMEs could merge to form a "Cannibal CME." Cannibal CMEs form when fast-moving CMEs overtake and gobble up slower CMEs in front of them. Internal shock waves created by such CME collisions do an good job sparking geomagnetic storms when they strike Earth's magnetic field.