The Sun is getting back into the swing of things: a big active region on its limb erupted yesterday (October 10), sending out a small storm of subatomic particles into space. We weren't in the line of fire, but over the next few days the rotation of the Sun will bring Active Region 11112 closer to the center of the Sun's disk, and if that region erupts it may send a storm our way. Here's a recent image of the Sun from the Solar Dynamics Observatory:
This shows the Sun in ultraviolet (where activity can manifest itself) from around 23:00 UT (19:00 Eastern US time) on October 11. The active region is pretty obvious there to the lower left.
A magnetogram, which shows magnetic activity, makes the region obvious as well. A recent one (shown here on the left) from around the same time as the image above again shows ...
