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A. L. Kiplinger (U. of Colorado and NOAA/SEC), H .A. Garcia (NOAA/SEC)
The period of late October to early November 2003 was a remarkable period of solar activity from three great active regions that existed simultaneously on the same hemisphere of the sun. NOAA region 486 is arguably the most prolific of the three regions by producing five GOES soft X-ray class flares during its disk passage of 22 October -- 5 November, 2003. Two of these flares saturated the GOES-10 1-8A and 0.5-4A detectors for periods of a few minutes. On 28 October, 2003, the first event reached a peak X-ray classification of X18.4 at 11:10 UT. There was only minor saturation of the 1-8A channel but there was significant saturation seen in the 0.5-4A band. The second saturated event appears to be the largest solar flare ever observed in soft X-rays which peaked near 19:57 UT on 04 November, 2003. By comparing both events with flares exhibiting similar time profiles (also from region 486) we have reconstructed the light curves for both flares in both channels. Original estimates of the 04 Nov. flare suggested that the flare had a peak 1-8A classification of X28 with a range of X25-X31. These analyses of the 3 s data indicate that the flare peaked with a classification of X30.6 near 19:47 UT. Fitting of the two channel data further indicates a peak temperature of 41.9 x 106 K at 19:42 UT and and an extraordinary log emission measure of 51.2 log(ne2 cm-3) at ~19:48:40 UT. Some examinations of the physical morphologies of the great flares and their comparison flares have also been conducted. ALK would like to acknowledge support from NASA grant NAG5-10892
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 #2
© YEAR. The American Astronomical Soceity.