Above The Clouds, Shifting Elsewhere

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BIG HOLE IN THE SUN'S ATMOSPHERE: Minor G1-class geomagnetic storms are possible for the next 3 days (May 19-21) as Earth passes through a wide stream of high-speed solar wind. The gaseous material is flowing from a hole in the sun's atmosphere, which stretches across most of the sun's southern hemisphere. The million-kilometer-wide structure is shown in this extreme ultraviolet image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory:

This is a "coronal hole"--a region in the sun's atmosphere where magnetic fields have opened up, allowing solar wind to escape. Coronal holes look dark because hot glowing gas normally contained there is missing. In this case, it is en route to Earth.

We've seen this coronal hole before--approximately every 28 days since February. Here it is in March, and again in April. It has been spinning around with the sun, emitting a stream of material akin to a giant lawn sprinkler. The stream encounter was particularly effective in March when it sparked auroras across many northern-tier US states.

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