An enormous solar flare erupted from the sun on Friday (Feb. 17) because the Earth was below a geomagnetic storm watch from flares earlier within the week.
The large solar flare, which registered as a strong X2.2 sun storm, occurred started at 2:38 p.m. EST (1938 GMT) and reached its peak power 48 minutes later. From begin to end, the extraordinary solar storm lasted one hour and 12 minutes, and created short-term radio blackouts on the sunlit facet of Earth, in keeping with an alert (opens in new tab) from the U.S. House Climate Prediction Group operated by NOAA. NASA’s Photo voltaic Dynamics Observatory captured video of the new flare.
The X2.2 solar flare adopted a collection of robust flares and a coronal mass ejection from the sun in current days, together with a strong X1.1 flare on Feb. 11. These sun storms prompted space weather specialists to difficulty a geomagnetic storm warning for northern latitudes from Feb. 16 to Feb. 18 that might make auroras seen as far south as Idaho and New York, in addition to have an effect on communications and different programs, in keeping with the alert (opens in new tab).
The brand new flare additionally unleashed a coronal mass ejection, a large eruption of solar plasma that may journey 1 million mph, towards the Earth, according (opens in new tab) to Spaceweather.com, which tracks space climate. It ought to attain the Earth on Feb. 20, the place it might additionally supercharge Earth’s auroras, the positioning reported.
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Friday’s solar flare erupted from a brand new sunspot referred to as Lively Area 3229, in keeping with Spaceweather.com.
“Radiation from the flare ionized the highest of Earth’s atmosphere, inflicting a deep shortwave radio blackout over the Americas: map (opens in new tab),” Spaceweather.com wrote in an alert (opens in new tab). “Mariners, aviators and ham radio operators could have observed lack of sign and different uncommon propagation results at frequencies under 30 MHz for greater than an hour after the flare.”
Photo voltaic flares are enormous eruptions of charged particles from the sun and may happen at completely different strengths. X-class flares like Friday’s occasion are probably the most highly effective kind of flare, whereas A , B and C-class flares among the many weakest. The average M-class flares are slightly below X-class occasions and may amplify the northern lights.
“Flares and solar eruptions can impression radio communications, electrical energy grids, navigation alerts, and pose dangers to spacecraft and astronauts,” NASA wrote (opens in new tab) in an replace on Feb. 17.
NASA and different companies recurrently monitor the sun’s solar flares and different climate with spacecraft just like the Solar Dynamics Observatory and SOHO spacecraft (quick for Photo voltaic and Heliospheric Observatory), which is a joint challenge of NASA and the European House Company.
The sun is at the moment in an lively phase of its 11-year solar cycle. The present cycle is known as Solar Cycle 25.
Electronic mail Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or observe him @tariqjmalik. Observe us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.
