Solar Storm Graze & Red Planet Rendezvous | Space Weather News 01.10.2021

Happy New Year everyone. Our Sun is slowly coming back from being on Holiday since the big solar storms of about a month ago. It has returned to being spotless, but at least we are still getting some activity. We’ve had two solar storms launch that are nearly Earth-directed and they could graze us sometime on the 11th or 12th, just enough to enhance the pocket of fast solar wind we are expecting at that time as well. This could bring aurora down to high-latitudes and possibly to mid-latitudes momentarily. We also are holding on to marginal radio propagation on Earth’s dayside thanks to a small bright region emerging on the Earth facing disk. That region will be named region 2796 (incidentally I say the wrong number in the forecast, I know) if it grows into a sunspot so we are watching it carefully. Nonetheless the region is keeping solar flux in the mid-70s so we should enjoy marginal radio propagation conditions easily throughout this week. Learn the details of the solar storms en route, catch up on the latest conditions on the Red Planet as we prepare for the Mars 2020 rendezvous, and see what else our Sun has in store!