The CME that I talked about in Fireworks from the Sun, originated from the X class solar flare of the 5th of March, is hitting the Earth right now. The increasing proton flux has produced an increase of particle flux in the ISS that is being measured by ALTEA. Here is the particle flux detected by ALTEA and the proton flux as detected by GOES satellites.
The intense activity of the sun recorded in late February is going on. On 7th of March 2012, the sun unleashed an X5.4-class flare at 00:28 UT coming from Active Region 1429. As described in what is a solar storm? this flare is associated to a large coronal mass ejection (CME) that is not yet known how will impact Earth. After a while a second X5.1 flare happened on the same spot.
An image of the flare as seen by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (AIA 304)
Below a short video of the double flare.
Download a full sun video of the double flare (ESA HSO movie).
On the same day a CME relative to the 5.1 flare happened on the 5th of March is impacting Earth. On the image below there is the X-Ray flux as measured by GOES satellites where it is possible to see both events.
This is the proton flux as measured by GOES. The sudden increase of flux on the 7th of March is relative to CME related to the flare of March 5th.
And what is the situation of the particle flux inside the ISS? At the moment ALTEA is not seeing any increase of the flux, but I recall you that ALTEA is not very sensitive to protons that are the main component of this kind of events. We will see in next hours since the flux is still increasing. For sure the sun is in a very active period.
ALTEA Space 