It is raining protons! While not as massive as the barrage mentioned by Juramike early in this topic http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=6715), we are currently in the midst of a solar proton ‘storm’ https://spaceweather.com/images2024/29jan24/halocmeSOHO.gif courtesy of an eruption (flare) of a departing sunspot group AR3559 . Protons accelerated by the flare are now following the ‘Parker Spiral’ toward Earth and raining down on our atmosphere. The ‘Parker Spiral’ solar magnetic field effect is demonstrated here https://spaceweather.com/repeat_images/parkerspiral2.png.

Large sunspot AR3590 currently facing earth has produced multiple X class solar flares over the last few days, including the strongest (X6.3) flare of solar cycle 25 (see link below). As per SpaceWeather today https://spaceweather.com/ this was not responsible for the 12-hour outage of AT&T's network on Thursday 2/22/2024. https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/goes-x-ray-flux

The latest data for Solar Cycle 25 regarding sunspot number and F10.7cm radio flux progressions are found here: https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression. Both data plots continue to show a strong cycle with the radio flux data especially exceeding prediction values.

Solar flare activity associated with sunspot AR 3599, has produced an earth polar cap absorption event
https://www.windows2universe.org/spaceweather/polar_com.html.
Another region of the sun is producing M class solar flares https://spaceweather.com/images2024/16mar24/m4_teal_anim.gif , the origin of which is not quite visible as yet (but is rotating into view over the next 2 days).

The new active sunspot group, associated with the M class X-ray flares noted in post above, has rotated into view. (See animated gif below). Images are from the Solar Dynamics Observatory https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/mission/

A ‘sympathetic’ https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/340945/pdf, X1.12 class, solar flare was recorded today by Nasa’s Solar Dynamic Observatory. https://spaceweather.com/images2024/23mar24...eflare_teal.gif. Two sunspots AR3614 and AR3615 appear to be involved. The flare has produced a halo CME https://spaceweather.com/images2024/23mar24/halocme.gif which is Earth directed. A good description of the events appear here https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/news/vi...rected-cme.html as well as in today’s SpaceWeather page. https://spaceweather.com/. A moderate geomagnetic storm is predicted. https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/geomagnetic-...4-25-march-2024.

The SUN sports a VERY large sunspot (AR3664) which has been compared to the Carrington sunspot of 1859 in size and configuration. The Carrington sunspot caused geomagnetic storms that set fire to telegraph offices and sparked auroras from Cuba to Hawaii. AR3664 has produced multiple CMEs that are Earth directed and expected to produce a severe geomagnetic storm on May 11th.

The sun’s face from June 2 2024 shows impressive sunspot activity including multiple X-class flares from sunspot 3697 in the last 36 hours. This sunspot, previously named 3664, is the one that produced the geomagnetic storm of May 10-11th.