Active Region 1057, looking right at us!

Active Region 1057, looking right at us!

One of the first things I do every morning is check spaceweather.com to see what the sunspot number is, but spaceweather.com includes a lot of other information as well.  Today, there’s an article describing radio bursts from Active Region 1057, a large sunspot currently facing toward Earth.  Bursts were audible yesterday around 21 MHz.  Today while preparing lunch, I received a realtime alert on my iPhone, via the 3D Sun app (a cool free app from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, STEREO) that radio bursts were occurring, and could be heard around 21 MHz.  A short while later (about 13:45 EDT, 17:45 UTC) I was watching Faros as it monitored the NCDXF/IARU 15-meter propagation beacons on 21.150 MHz, and I saw this:
Burst

I’ve outlined the interesting feature, which looks like background noise but at a slightly elevated level of energy, sweeping gradually downward in frequency.  Could this be one of the  radio bursts from AR1057?

By the way, Faros is indicating a good, if somewhat variable day on 15 meters.  It’s been picking up the ZS6DN beacon in South Africa off and on, as well as 4X6TU in Israel.

Share on Facebook