A Sunspot with Intense Activity Is Directly Aimed at Us Once More. Here’s What We Can Anticipate.

AR 3664, the sunspot region that gave most of Earth those marvelous auroras during the early part of May this year, is back and is as naughty as ever.

Despite being a rather active region, producing several X-class flares, including the most powerful one of the current solar cycle, AR 3664 rotated out of sight into the far side of the Sun in mid-May. However, it did not stay there and returned in a spectacular manner.

When it rose again on the Sun’s disc on 27 May as AR 3697, the sunspot loosed another dramatic X-class flare, this one with an X 2 rating. 8 in intensity.

Since then, it has produced four more X-class flares, making the current total five as of the time of this writing.

These recent eruptions are not expected to bring about solar storms similar to those that occurred in early part of May. In these flares, which are capable of producing auroras by creating a disturbance in the Earth’s magnetosphere, no coronal mass ejection has been observed.

Yet, this does not suggest that AR 3697 is over. It is still discharging less intense flares on a daily basis. On 2 June, it let out two M-class flares – which are 10 times weaker than X-class flares and 10 C-class flares. Even though we may not feel the drastic impacts of these flares, there are higher chances of X-class flares happening, with an estimated chance of about 30% according to Spaceweatherlive.

Currently, the region is located close to the central meridian on the Sun disk, which means that any activity is likely to be directed to the Earth. Although this does not necessarily lead to CME activity, the chances are much higher. Moreover, due to the fact that we are in the vicinity of the maximum activity of the Sun’s cycle, one could expect the appearance of a new sunspot region in the near future, which may give us an opportunity to observe a new stunning activity of the Sun in the approaching months.

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