Bye bye

AR2192 is about to take its leave of us. This is the first glimpse that I have had of it since the 19th October! It has been very active as it passed across the disc of the Sun, generating several X class flares, however, unusually these flares have not produced any Coronal Mass Ejections (CME's). It is these clouds of high energy particles that create aurora, so despite all of the activity we have not seen much happening in our atmosphere.
Although the Sunspot is now facing away from the Earth we are connected to the western limb of the Sun by spiralling magnetic fields so a big flare and CME from AR2192 over the next few days would be directed towards us. I'm not holding out much hope though!