Sun erupts in humongous solar flare, most powerful in 4 years
Baku, February 16 (AZERTAC). The sun unleashed its strongest solar flare in four years on February 14, hurling a massive wave of charged particles from electrified gas into space and toward Earth.
The solar storm sent a flash of radiation that hit Earth in a matter of minutes; a huge cloud of charged particles headed our way. These “coronal mass ejections,” as they are called, typically take around 24 hours or more to arrive. They can spark spectacular displays of the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights, at high latitudes and sometimes even into the northern United States.
The megaflare, which registered as a Class X2.2 flare on the scale of solar flares, was the first class X flare to occur in the new solar cycle of activity, which began last year. The sun is now ramping up toward a solar maximum around 2013, NASA said.
Class X flares are the strongest types of solar flares that can erupt from the sun. There are also two weaker categories: Class M flares, which are medium strength but still powerful, and Class C flares, which are the weakest storms from the sun. According to the website Spaceweather.com, which monitors space weather and sky watching events, the flare was the strongest of the last four years.
The Monday flare came on the heels of another, only slightly less powerful, class M6.6 flare on Sunday, February 13. Both events erupted from the same area on the sun, called active region 1158. Such a flare can bathe the Earth in high doses of ultraviolet radiation and X-rays hurl a huge burst of solar wind in our direction. When this burst arrives at Earth, the electrons and protons from the solar wind come into contact with our planet`s magnetic field, and stream toward the magnetic poles. The disturbance can create a geomagnetic storm in Earth`s magnetic field. “Geomagnetic storms are possible when the CME arrives 36 to 48 hours hence,” Spaceweather.com reported.
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