11618 Blasts a class M1.6 flare Parting Shot. HD

  
Best viewed with window expanded.
en francaise une moment s.v.p.
LAST GASP: Decaying sunspot AR1618 (not to be confused with growing sunspot AR1620) erupted on Nov. 27th (1557 UT), producing a last-gasp solar flare ranking M1.6 on the Richter Scale of Flares. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the extreme ultraviolet flash.
The movie shows a twisted plume of plasma flying away from the blast site, but only temporarily. The sun's gravity pulled the plume back to the stellar surface before it could escape. Extreme UV radiation from this explosion created some ripples of ionization in Earth's atmosphere above North America and Europe. Otherwise, the blast was not geoeffective.
A prominence appears to have been whipped off the eastern half of the Sun very early this morning. This resulted in a bright Coronal Mass Ejection (cme). So far the plasma cloud looks to be headed to the east and away from Earth.
Sunspot 1620 continues to expand and is producing C-Class solar flares. There is now an increased chance for an isolated M-Class solar flare event, particularly around 1620 having turned Beta-Gamma-Delta.
Elsewhere, Sunspot 1618 remains fairly stable as it heads towards the northwest limb, and a new sunspot rotated into view off the northeast limb and should be numbered 1623 later today.