Great news for sky watchers around the world! We are kicking off the northern hemisphere aurora season with a possible coronal mass ejection impact later tomorrow which would be Monday, the very first day of September this year!
An asymmetrical full halo coronal mass ejection left the Sun yesterday (30 August) during an M2.7 solar flare from sunspot region 4199 which at the time was located at a perfect earth-facing position. There is no doubt that this cloud of plasma has an earth-directed component as we can see a very clear halo outline on the LASCO C2 animated coronagraph images which you can find blow. We expect an arrival time tomorrow (1 September) around 20:00 UTC (plus/minus 6 hours). Geomagnetic storm conditions are likely as the NOAA SWPC has issued a moderate G2 geomagnetic storm watch (Kp6) for tomorrow (1 September) and surprisingly even a strong G3 geomagnetic storm watch (Kp7) for the following day (2 September) when CME effects are expected to peak.
