Despite expert predictions for a period of prolonged quiet for the Sun, solar cycle 25 has proven to be an active one, with 143 sunspots appearing on the Sun’s surface during February alone, and numerous solar flares erupting from the star’s surface—15 of them powerful X-class events—since the current cycleread more
A sunspot on the far side of the Sun has been discovered to be so large that “it is affecting the way the sun vibrates,” according to Spaceweather.com. The same region also produced a major coronal mass ejection and radiation storm on September 5; luckily for us the eruption isread more
While the danger posed by major solar storms to our civilization’s power grids is well documented (such as Whitley’s must-read 2012 ebook on the subject, Solar Flares), the potential effects of such storms on another network vital to the functioning of our society—the internet—is not as well understood. A new studyread more
The sun’s solar flare activity appears to be hotting up: a massive X-Class solar flare erupted early on Sunday (Oct. 19) from a huge sunspot, and astronomers fear that this could just be the beginning of a spate of sizeable flares.
Solar flares are explosions of energetic radiation that can have potentially devastating effects on our communication systems, causing radio blackouts and affecting satellite measurements. Flares are categorised into three types, with grade C being the least powerful, grade M a medium-level flare, and grade X being the most powerful of all. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft captured images of the latest huge flare which was classified as a formidable X1.1.
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