by The active sun is running at full speed.
In the early hours of today (August 14), the Sun unleashed the most powerful class of solar flare, a massive Class X eruption. The solar flares reached their peak at 2:40 a.m. EDT (06:40 GMT) and caused shortwave radio blackouts in the sunlit part of the Earth at the time of the outbreak, Asia and the Indian Ocean.
What makes this X-Class Solar flare What is particularly interesting is that it arose from the “rule violation” Sunspot AR3784, which had already attracted the attention of solar researchers and Aurora Hunter because of its strange polarity.
The sunspot’s polarity violates a century-old rule, Hale’s Law, that states that sunspots in the Northern Hemisphere should be -+ polarized. Instead, sunspot AR3784 is ± polarized, a full 90-degree rotation, according to Spaceweather.com.
Related: Rare pair of northern lights and Perseid meteor shower delight sky watchers
It’s not the first sunspot to break the rule. According to spaceweather.com, this happens about 3% of the time. However, the majority of “rule breakers” have a “reverse polarity” of +- instead of -+, but AR3784 falls somewhere in between.
Experts at Spaceweather.com suspect that the “magnetic foundations of this sunspot spiral in an unusual way. If opposite magnetic polarities are twisted too tightly together, a Class X solar flare could result.” And lo and behold, the sunspot did just that.
Solar flares are eruptions on the sunthat release intense bursts of electromagnetic radiation. These eruptions occur when accumulated magnetic energy in the Sun’s atmosphere is suddenly released. They are classified into different categories by size, with X-class eruptions being the most powerful. M-class eruptions are 10 times less intense than X-class eruptions, followed by C-class eruptions, which are 10 times weaker than M-class eruptions. B-class eruptions are 10 times weaker than C-class eruptions, and A-class eruptions, which are 10 times weaker than B-class eruptions, have no significant impact on Earth. Within each class, numbers from 1 to 10 (and higher for X-class) indicate the relative strength of the eruptions.
Strong solar flares like the one released this morning can often be caused by a coronal mass ejection – a large cloud of plasma and magnetic field emanating from the Sun – it remains to be confirmed whether this outburst was also associated with a coronal mass ejection (CME).
Aurora hunters cross your fingers and charge your cameras! (If you’re hoping to snap a photo of the Northern Lights, check out our guide on where and how to photograph auroras.)
CMEs transport electrically charged particles called ions. When these collide with the Earth, Magnetospherethey can trigger geomagnetic storms. During these storms, the ions interact with gases in Earth’s atmospherewhereby energy is released in the form of light. This phenomenon is known as Northern Lightsor Aurora borealis, in the Northern Hemisphere and as Southern Lights, or Aurora australis, in the Southern Hemisphere.
If a coronal mass ejection is confirmed, we could be in for even more geomagnetic storms and increased auroral activity, so charge your cameras as a precaution. We await further confirmation.
What we do know is that the X-flare was accompanied by a strong radio blackout on Earth. The shortwave radio blackouts over Asia and the Indian Ocean were the result of the intense X-ray and ultraviolet radiation released during the X-flare.
The radiation from solar flares reaches the Earth at Speed of light and ionizes the upper atmosphere upon arrival. This ionization creates a denser environment for high-frequency shortwave radio signals, facilitating long-distance communication.
When these radio waves pass through ionized (electrically charged) layers, they lose energy through increased collisions with Electronswhich can weaken or completely absorb the radio signals.
Editor’s note: If you capture a stunning photo or video of the Northern Lights (or Southern Lights!) and would like to share it with Space.com to help tell a possible story, submit images, comments about the view and your location, and permissions to [email protected].
