December 2016 Geomagnetic Summary

[Carbon60]

Hi all,

A couple of long duration solar storms in December (over several days) as a result of fast flowing solar wind flowing from a couple of large coronal holes in the solar atmosphere. The storms over the holiday period were particularly impressive with pink/white colouration according to spaceweather.com

2016_December Summary.jpg (266.66 KiB) Viewed 675 times

The sun may appear to be relatively quite through our scopes, but these large coronal holes keep circling around, bringing periodic storms for aurora sky watchers to enjoy.

Thanks for looking.

Stu.

[marktownley]

An excellent record Stu! I hope we have coronal holes this december, we're back in Iceland again then. It's interesting to see the effect these coronal holes have.

[Montana]

Superb data Stu, I am glad you picked it up, sadly I never saw any auroras during this time even though we had clear skies. So I need one even more massive than the 21st one

Alexandra

[Carbon60]

Many thanks, Mark and Alexandra.

It's interesting to see that we are seeing some good geomagnetic storms even on the declining edge of the solar cycle. I don't think we'll see many really large storms (G4-G5), but certainly more G1s and G2s as a result of further coronal holes. It will be interesting to record the trend as the cycle progresses.

Stu.