News
EVENT NEWS ITEM 039

January 6, 2004: Did the Sun lose track?.

EVENT NEWS ITEM 038

December 20, 2003: The SIDC market.

EVENT NEWS ITEM 037

December 15, 2003: Services for GPS users.

EVENT NEWS ITEM 036

December 8, 2003: In the ban of THE hole.

EVENT NEWS ITEM 035

November 20, 2003: Aurora's painting the sky.

EVENT NEWS ITEM 034

November 14, 2003: CMEs hitting Earth.

EVENT NEWS ITEM 033

November 12, 2003: Return of the monster sunspot groups.

EVENT NEWS ITEM 032

October 30, 2003: Third Very large X-ray burst in less than one week!!!.

EVENT NEWS ITEM 031

October 29, 2003: Very large X-ray (X17.2) burst from sunspot group 70 (0486).

EVENT NEWS ITEM 030

October 23, 2003: Two X-bursts from sunspot group 70.

EVENT NEWS ITEM 029

October 20, 2003: A major (X1.1) flare erupts from the east.

EVENT NEWS ITEM 023

July 23, 2002: A major (X4.8) flare & A prominence eruption played in two acts.

EVENT NEWS ITEM 022

July 16, 2002: a beautiful and puzzling full halo CME.

ANNOUNCEMENT NEWS ITEM 021

June 24, 2002: The solar physics department of the Royal Observatory of Belgium is happy to announce the first light taken with the new White-Light CCD camera.

ANNOUNCEMENT NEWS ITEM 020

May 21, 2002: The solar physics department of the Royal Observatory of Belgium is happy to announce the first light taken with the new H-alpha CCD camera.

EVENT NEWS ITEM 019

April 21, a violent though beautiful flare was seen at the western limb of the Sun.

ANNOUNCEMENT NEWS ITEM 017

Feb 6, 2002: The SIDC introduces a new utility for our website visitors: a set of clickable maps containing many links to Space Weather data.

EVENT NEWS ITEM 016

Nov 6, 2001: The CME that left the Sun on Nov 4 triggered a severe geomagnetic storm.

EVENT NEWS ITEM 014

July 23, 2001: Although solar activity is rather low, beautiful Coronal Mass Ejections can still be seen, such as the one depicted here

EVENT NEWS ITEM 012

May 7, 2001: The Sun stages a CME show. Watch the Sun blast off a streamer plasma cloud.
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EVENT NEWS ITEM 010

April 27, 2001: The SIDC participates in the Sun-Earth connection day and celebrates the fifth anniversary of SOHO.
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EVENT NEWS ITEM 009

March 2001: NOAA active region 9393, the largest sunspot group of the current cycle.
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EVENT NEWS ITEM 007

October 2000: Did we pass the solar maximum yet? Different prediction methods disagree.
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EVENT NEWS ITEM 006

September 22, 2000: Active region 9169 the largest sunspot in 9 years.
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EVENT NEWS ITEM 005

Tantalizing EIT picture from SOHO
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EVENT NEWS ITEM 004

The ACE satellite detected a steady increase, over a period of roughly one day on the 28th of August, of the solar wind speed from 400 to 600 km/s.
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EVENT NEWS ITEM 003

High resolution image from the Swedish Solar Telescope.
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EVENT NEWS ITEM 002

Interplanetary shock wave from the Sun struck Earth's magnetosphere on August 12, 2000
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EVENT NEWS ITEM 001

Erupting filament imaged by the TRACE satellite.
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EVENT PRESTO FROM SIDC 28/07/00 7:23 UT

A steep discontinuity in the solar wind parameters has been observed on July 28 at about 5:40 UT by ACE. Also this morning, around 6 UT, the proton flux at >10 Mev reached the threshold of 10 pfu, but is now already decreasing. this may be the response to the halo CME observed on 25 at 3:30 UT. As a consequence, active geomagnetic conditions may be expected.

EVENT PRESTO FROM SIDC 24/05/00 8:50 UT

An unexpextedly high geomagnetic perturbation probably due to a CME on 20 May which followed a C7/1N flare at 0535 began around 18 UT on May 23. After a warning communicated by the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy, there is a possibility of middle latitude auroral activity, which may extend to the extreme North of France, Belgium, Germany, Poland up to Northern Russia.

EVENT PRESTO FROM SIDC 16/05/00 13:29 UT

A small proton enhancement ( > 10 meV) started around 15 21UT
Possibility of geomagnetic active conditions to minor
storm on 18, due to a full halo CME starting on 15 09 UT

LOCAL SIDC has been granted the status of RWC May 1-5 2000

During the Space Weather week (May 1-5 2000) in Boulder (US), the International Space Environment Service (ISES) assembled. At this meeting, it was approved that the SIDC will take over most of the activities previously performed at the observatory of Meudon. As such, the SIDC has now officially become a Regional Warning Center of the ISES. The RWC Brussels service of the SIDC will provide space weather forecasts and warnings to users in Western Europe.

EVENT PRESTO FROM SIDC 02/05/00 14:57 UT

A halo CME was initiated on April 30, at 08:00 UT in the Catania active region 26 (NOAA 8976). Unsettled to active geomagnetic conditions are expected late on May 2nd,and on May 3rd. A shock, possibly associated with this event, has already been measured by the ACE spacecraft (Lagrangian L1 point), today (May 2) at about 11:00 UT, i.e. after a delay of about 51 hours.

REPORT Aurora Borealis over Belgium April 6-7 2000
In the night of 6 to 7 of April Aurora Borealis was visible in Belgium. We show a summary and photos of the event:

Click here to visit the Aurora Borealis website.
Webmaster: Erwin Verwichte

April, 12th 2000

EVENT PRESTO FROM SIDC 05/04/00 9:12 UT

Pronton event at >10 Mev started at 2055 on 4 April, and is still in progress

LOCAL A new start for the SIDC
Since 1981, the Royal Observatory of Belgium harbours the 'Sunspot Index Data Center', the World data Center for the Sunspot Index and a data analysis service of the FAGS. Recently, the forecast center of Paris-Meudon (Regional Warning Center of the International Service of Space Environment, ISES) was transferred and added to the activities of the SIDC. Moreover, a complete archive of all images of the SOHO instrument EIT (and in the future also of the STEREO mission) has become available at the SIDC. Given all these extensions, the new style SIDC has become a 'Solar Influences Data Center' that analyses the solar activity on different timescales.

February, 23th 2000