Giant Coronal Hole

[Carole]

http://spaceweather.com/

ENORMOUS CORONAL HOLE: A gigantic hole in the sun's atmosphere has opened up and a broad stream of solar wind is flowing out of it. This is called a "coronal hole." It is the deep blue-colored region in this extreme UV image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory:

CHANCE OF FLARES: NOAA forecasters have boosted the odds of an M-class solar flare today to 30%. They are responding to the emergence of sunspot AR2434 near the sun's southeastern limb. Earlier this week while AR2434 was on the farside of the sun, it hurled several clouds of plasma over the limb: movie. This suggests it is capable of significant explosions.