Significant CME heading toward Mars

A significant CME blasted off the sun today, Oct. 22nd, around 1100 UT. Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab say the cloud is heading for Mars, due to hit the Red Planet on Oct. 26th.  (movie, forecast track)

While looking at the latest STEREO Ahead images, there appears to be a very bright and possibly a partially earth directed Coronal Mass Ejection blasting away from the Sun during the early hours on Saturday. The source of this explosion may have been a Solar Filament burst. Please watch the video below.

A long duration M-Class Flare took place around 11:15 UTC Saturday morning. The source appears to be in the vicinity of Sunspot 1314 which is now located on the NW Limb. A Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) resulted, but will not be earth directed because of the spots location. A movie of the CME is below. (SolarHam)

Click HERE for an additional movie showing the magnetic loops captured by SDO.

FLARE	0-24 hr	24-48 hr
CLASS M	65 %	65 %
CLASS X	10 %	10 %