One of two high-powered X-class solar flares unleashed by the sun barely an hour apart early this morning:
Early Tuesday morning (June 10), an apparently hyperactive active region rotating around the sun's southwestern limb erupted with not one, but two X-class solar flares — the strongest type of flare, based on a letter-based classification system.The image was captured by the orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly.
The first flare occurred at 7:41 a.m. EDT (11:41 UT) and registered as an X2.2. Just over an hour later at 8:52 a.m. EDT an X1.5-class flare (pictured above) blazed from the same spot, a little less than half the strength of the first.
...Solar flares are driven by powerful magnetic fields rising up from deep within the sun. They occur around "active regions" — accompanied by sunspots — and blast large amounts of electromagnetic radiation out into space. If a flare happens to occur over an active region facing Earth (which this one is not… yet) it can trigger a geomagnetic storm, resulting in increased auroral activity and potential communication interference.
Neat!
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