Diary News Feed

After approximately two weeks of calm, solar flare activity appears to be resuming. Over the past few days, two large active regions have been gradually and leisurely emerging into the line of sight from Earth on the left (eastern) edge of the sun, detectable by bright magnetic loops rising above the horizon.

For those tired of seeing gaps and interruptions in incoming solar wind data, there's little good news at the moment. The world's leading spacecraft, DSCOVR, which has served as the primary source of data in recent years, failed due to a software glitch back in July of this year.

The number of days with magnetic storms and the total number of geomagnetically disturbed days in 2025 significantly exceeded last year's figures and became one of the highest in the past two decades. Over the 358 days since the beginning of the year, magnetic storms have been observed in 69 cases, compared to 44 cases in 2024.

Approximately a day ahead of schedule, signs of the impact of a disturbed solar wind flow from a coronal hole formed on the Sun on Earth began to be detected in the vicinity of the planet. A corresponding complex structure is now observed in the center of the solar disk, encompassing the southern and part of the northern hemisphere of the Sun.

According to calculations, approximately two hours ago, at approximately 4:16 AM UTC, the 3I/ATLAS object passed its closest point to Earth. The distance to the object at that moment was, and, in fact, still is, 268,918,000 km—a huge figure by terrestrial standards, though, of course, completely insignificant in terms of interstellar distances.

In the unfolding drama of ideas surrounding the interstellar body 3I/ATLAS, in addition to the question of what this object is (which we will not discuss, since we cannot add anything new to what was previously stated by the parties), the question of whether alien probes could, in principle, be present in the Solar System is of interest.

3I/ATLAS is currently only three days away from its closest approach to Earth, allowing us to determine the time of its closest approach with great precision. Calculations indicate that the celestial body will pass closest to the planet on December 19 at approximately 4:00 AM UT.

The Sun appears to be entering another two-week period of calm. The absolutely depressing picture of the solar winter will likely be somewhat relieved in the coming days by a rather large, uniquely shaped coronal hole that has formed on the solar disk.

One of the year's strongest meteor showers, the Geminids, is predicted to peak on the night of December 13-14.

A rather beautiful process of the Sun's separation from a large prominence, filmed over the past 24 hours.