Our star has been pretty quiet lately, but recently the Sun has been unleashing an X-class flare, the most powerful category of solar flares.
The Sun unleashes an X-class flare. This intense solar flare originated in the sunspot region AR3869 and lasted for an hour, peaking at 06:57 (Romanian time) on October 24. Extreme ultraviolet radiation from the eruption caused disruptions to shortwave radio communications over Australia and Southeast Asia.
The eruption was accompanied by a coronal mass ejection (CME), a plasma cloud and magnetic field, according to the space meteorologist’s post Sara Housseal on the X platform.
The Sun unleashes an X3.3 class eruption
“As expected with the return of more active regions, major solar flare activity has returned. AR3869 wasted no time and generated an X3.3 flare earlier, accompanied by a large CME. These regions will need to be monitored in the coming days as they rotate westward and face Earth,” Housseal wrote.
When a coronal mass ejection hits the Earth, the phenomenon can trigger geomagnetic storms, such as the recent ones that have allowed spectacular aurora borealis to be observed in mid-latitude areas. However, aurora “hunters” should temper their enthusiasm, as it is unlikely that a significant portion of the CME released during this flare will hit Earth, given the position of the sunspot at the time of the flare. However, in the absence of complete CME models, we cannot rule out the possibility that the Earth is “lightly touched”, writes Space.com.
Space meteorologists and aurora watchers will be closely monitoring AR3869, which will reach Earth’s “impact zone” in the coming days. In this position, any CME released would have a better chance of hitting our planet. AR3869 is not alone. Several large sunspots are also visible rotating from the southeast side of the Sun, so we may be in for more solar events in the coming days.
What are solar flares?
Solar flares are explosive events on the Sun’s surface that emit powerful bursts of electromagnetic radiation. They occur when magnetic energy builds up in the solar atmosphere and is rapidly released. Eruptions are classified according to intensity, with class X being the most powerful. Class M flares are 10 times weaker than Class X, followed by Class C, 10 times weaker than Class M. Class B flares are 10 times weaker than Class C, and A-class ones, 10 times weaker than B-class ones, usually have no noticeable effects on Earth. Each class also has a numerical scale (from 1 to 10 and even higher for class X) to indicate the strength of the eruption.
Immediately after the X-class solar flare, radio wave disruptions were detected over Australia and the Southeast Pacific, regions illuminated by the Sun at the time of the flare. These outages are common during such explosive events and are caused by the intense emission of X-rays and extreme ultraviolet radiation released during an X-class flare.
Radiation from solar flares travels to Earth at the speed of light, ionizing the upper atmosphere on arrival. This ionization increases the density of the atmosphere, affecting high-frequency radio signals used for long-distance communications. As these radio waves pass through the electrically charged, ionized layers, they lose energy due to frequent collisions with electrons, which can weaken or even completely absorb the radio signals.
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Source: www.descopera.ro
