EarthSky | Sun activity: 3rd CME sideswipe in a week

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EarthSky | Sun activity: 3rd CME sideswipe in a week


The March 20, 2022 solar flare and filament eruption. The eruption produced an EIT wave, Type II radio burst, and a CME that should glance Earth on March 23, 2022. Image via helioviewer.org.

Another possible CME sideswipe coming

A CME is estimated to give Earth a glancing blow on March 23, 2022, with a possible uptick in auroral activity around that time. Sunspot region AR2971 launched a C4 solar flare and resulting CME at 7:45 UTC on March 20. As Spaceweather.com pointed out:

This will be the 3rd time in the past week that a CME has almost landed a direct hit.

This eruption also caused a filament to be ejected from the sun. Solar filaments are long ropes of solar material held down by magnetic fields. They’re the same pink-red structures you see around a darkened moon during total solar eclipses. In this case, the magnetic fields shifted in such a way that the filament detached from the sun, sending a CME our way.

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Filaments on the sun can exist by themselves, or they can lay over a sunspot region. Here the filament was draped over region AR2971, giving us an especially energetic explosion.

Half of huge orange sphere against a black background with a small ball in the upper center.
A solar prominence (also known as a filament when viewed against the solar disk) is a large, bright feature extending outward from the sun’s surface. Prominences (filaments) are anchored to the sun’s surface in its photosphere. They extend outwards into the sun’s hot outer atmosphere, called the corona. A prominence forms over timescales of about a day, and stable prominences may persist in the corona for several months, looping hundreds of thousands of miles into space. This image, from March 2010, shows a solar eruptive prominence, with Earth superimposed for a sense of scale. Image via NASA/SDO.

A March 20 EIT wave

During the March 20 solar flare and filament release, the eruption also created an EIT wave. EIT stands for Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Telescope, an instrument aboard the SOHO sun observatory. It was this instrument that first observed these waves, which are blast waves that ripple through the solar corona, the outermost part of the sun’s atmosphere. They’re visible only in wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light.

If you look closely at the animated gif above, you can the wave moving away from the eruption. You can also see dark pieces of material leaving the area with the bright flash from the flare. This dark material is the filament, which is much cooler than the surrounding atmosphere, the corona. This makes the material appear darker.

The eruption also produced a Type II radio burst. These blasts of radio waves are most associated with CMEs and shock waves through the corona.

The CME itself is not expected to provide much of a disturbance to Earth’s magnetic field but it may be combined with the arrival of high-speed solar wind from a coronal hole. Together the two may create a minor geomagnetic disturbance or at least some heightened activity. This means the possibility for some heightened aurora from high latitudes and lots of beautiful pictures from aurora watchers.

Coronal hole detected in the SDO 193 wavelength. This coronal produced high-speed solar wind expected to reach Earth on March 23, 2022. Image via NASA iSWA.

Today’s sun

Sun activity: Large yellow sphere with small dark spots.
No sun activity today? Today’s sun appears relatively quiet, with no large sunspot regions easily visible in this March 21, 2022, image from NASA SDO. But some active regions are there, as evidenced by the solar flare and filament release on March 20, 2022. View this image with labels, via SpaceWeather.com.

Bottom line: Sun activity for March 18, 2022. A CME from the sun might deliver a glancing blow to our planet the weekend of March 18 to March 20. Stay tuned!

C. Alex Young

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About the Author:

C. Alex Young is a solar astrophysicist studying the Sun and space weather. Alex is passionate about sharing science with diverse audiences. This led him to start The Sun Today with his designer wife, Linda. First through Facebook and Twitter then adding an extensive website thesuntoday.org, the two work together to engage the public about the Sun and its role in our solar system. Alex led national engagement efforts for the 2017 total solar eclipse. He is the Associate Director for Science in the Heliophysics Science Division at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Armando Caussade

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About the Author:

Armando is well known as an astronomy educator, after 30+ years leading extensive initiatives of public outreach and 10+ years teaching in colleges. As one of only a handful of Puerto Rican science communicators during Comet Halley’s last visit, he assumed a pioneering role starting in 1985 when science was just beginning to enter the local mindset; over time his work brought meaningful change to the culture, inspiring people to pursue interests in science and technology. His affiliations include Ana G. Méndez University–Cupey, where in 2014 he spearheaded an 8-course extension program focusing on observational astronomy, the first ever in the island.

Raúl Cortés

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About the Author:

Raúl Cortés studied engineering at the Autonomous University of Nuevo León in Monterrey, Mexico, obtained a scholarship to continue his studies in Japan and after returning to Monterrey he got credits on MBA from the Graduate School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Faculty. He became a teacher at the University UANL teaching Math and Physics and dedicated the rest of his professional career to serve in engineering areas for USA, Japan and Germany based corporations. His passion for the skies go back to when he was a child, always intrigued about the stars and constellations and reading and researching about the matter. From 2010 on, he dedicated his attention to photographing the stars, constellations, the moon and the sun. Raúl’s work on his photography has been published and posted on the ESC as well as in other platforms and has gained attention to be published by local Monterrey newspapers.



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