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Single Event Upset

An inflight incident with an Airbus 320 on 30 October was most likely triggered by the impact of a high-energy particle resulting in an uncalled Single Event Upset ("bit flip"). The required soft- and/or hardware patch grounded 6000 aircraft.

Notch up

NOAA 4299 produced an M8 flare late on 6 December. The associated coronal mass ejection (CME) is earth-directed and may cause a strong geomagnetic storm on 8-9 December. The X-class flare of 8 December had NOAA 4298 as its source.

PROBA2/LYRA's New Data Product

A new data product reflects the progress that the LYRA team has made to discern the different instrumental degradation of quiet-Sun, active-region, and flare signals, and how to correct the data accordingly. The LYRA team wants to present this 15-year daily dataset to the solar community, in order to enable a comparison with various solar indicators, and to study the solar cycle.

Proba-3 is 1 year in space!

Exactly 1 year ago, December 5, the duo satellite Proba-3 left Earth to head to space. The telescope ASPIICS, whose task is to make perfect total solar eclipses from space, was onboard. Now, 1 year later, ASPIICS has already delivered a wealth of amazing pictures of the solar atmosphere close to its surface, a treasure box for solar scientists. 

Gargantuan

A giant sunspot region has rounded the southeast solar limb and has been the source of several M-class flares. The X-class event early on 1 December was produced by a smaller region near the northeast limb. Further strong flares are expected in the coming days.

Second breath

After 2 days of relative quiet, NOAA 4274 produced its fifth (!) X-class flare on 14 November. The associated CME is expected to deliver a glancing blow early on 16 November, resulting in -at most- a minor geomagnetic storm. As a result, no aurora are expected to be visible over Belgium. ***UPDATED***

Aurora over Belgium

A severe geomagnetic storm took place early on 12 November. Aurora were sighted over Belgium. The fast CME related to the X5 flare from 11 November arrived around 19:00 UTC on 12 November. Its magetic field was much weaker than that of the previous CME, resulting in only a strong geomagnetic storm which is still ongoing. Aurora over Belgium are no longer expected. ***UPDATED***