Solar Cycle 25 has been an exciting one for sure, with many X-level solar flares and a few excellent opportunities for those of us who live around 41 degrees latitude to see auroral activity.

This past week several notable flares corresponded with large Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) that were Earth effective. One of those flares impacted earth and produced a Major G4 Geomagnetic storm (in fact, it was just a tick below the level of Extreme G5). The CME impacted earth after 1500z Oct 10, causing the Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF/Bz) to point south, creating perfect conditions for aurora.

Here in RI, last light was around 6:45 PM local time and by 7:15 we were in a remote area with good views to the North, East, and West.  The display was stunningly bright to the naked eye.  At one point the red/pink color in the sky was so intense that I noticed the ground was reflecting the color.  The photos below were taken between 23:20 and 23:30 UTC.

The Geomagnetic storm continued for almost 12 hours as shown in the Space Weather Prediction Center graph below.

As always two wonderful sources for Amateur Radio operators interested in solar condition are:

• https://solarham.com/
• https://www.spaceweather.com/

Club member Bruce NJ3K, who lives in PA commented that 6-meter propagation was quite enhanced during this disturbed condition, likely caused by auroral propagation.

Space Weather Prediction Center record of K Index showing severe conditions around October 10

Photo by WB4SON taken around 23:25 UTC in Exeter Rhode Island

Photo by WB4SON taken around 23:20 UTC in Exeter RI

There is an absolutely amazing video that captures solar activity for the past decade.  Each second represents one day of sun time.  While the video runs an hour, the real value is to fast forward or backward to cover large amounts of time and see how the activity changes.  You will note periods of time when most of the activity is near the equator, then progressing more toward the poles over time.  Simply amazing!

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/watch-a-10-year-time-lapse-of-sun-from-nasa-s-sdo

Solar Cycle 24 is diminishing rapidly, and we’ve already had several days with zero sunspot activity.  We should hit the minimum then see the uptick sometime around 2020. But what will Solar Cycle 25 look like?  You might want to take a guess after looking at the last three solar cycles in the image below.

According to Dr. Sten Odenwall, we will start seeing the new sunspots from Cycle 25 sometime around late-2019. The sunspot maximum is likely to occur in 2024, with most forecasts predicting about half as many sunspots as in Cycle 24.  Weak indeed!

The bad news is that some studies show sunspot magnetic field strengths have been declining since 2000 and are already close to the minimum needed to produce sunspots on the solar surface. This is also supported by independent work in 2015 published in the journal Nature. Therefore, by Cycle 25, magnetic fields may be too weak to form recognizable sunspots at all, spelling the end of the sunspot cycle phenomenon.

Let’s hope that Cycle 24 isn’t our last!

(You can read more in Dr. Odenwall’s blog here)