Solar activity heating up, large flare and more sun spots

Today 1/9/13 at approximately 05:30 UTC a very large solar flare occurred as can be seen in the image above.  It does not appear that this is an Earth effecting event. Watch this 24 hour video at about 05:30 you can see the large ejection at from the lower left side of the images. As you watch the video you can see an increase in flares all around the ring of the sun. There are also some other sunspots that are now coming into view as the sun rotates. These look to be more active than we have been seeing.  A  large sunspot is emerging over the sun’s eastern limb –  AR1654.  This spot has two dark cores each 4 or more times the size of Earth. The potential for activity will be know better as AR1654 rotates into view. Recently the sun has been very quiet but that appears to be changing.

You can view real time videos of the sun by going to our solar image page. Space Weather updates can be found on our Space Weather Page.