Good news, bad news for Sun watchers this week, as our star launched a solar flare even bigger than the one back in May that gave us an amazing display of aurora that dipped down into pretty low latitudes. This was a big one; where the earlier outburst was only an X8.9 class, the one on July 23 was X14. That sure sounds powerful, but to put some numbers to it, the lower end of the X-class exceeds 10-4 W/m2 of soft X-rays. Numbers within the class designate a linear increase in power, so X2 is twice as powerful as X1. That means the recent X14 flare was about five times as powerful as the May flare that put on such a nice show for us. Of course, this all pales in comparison to the strongest flare of all time, a 2003 whopper that pegged the needle on satellite sensors at X17 but was later estimated at X45.
So while the X14 last week was puny by comparison, it still might have done some damage if it had been Earth-directed. As it was, the flare and its associated coronal mass ejection occurred on the far side of the Sun, sending all that plasma off into the void, since pretty much all the planets were on this side of the Sun at the time. That’s the bad news part of this story, at least for those of us who enjoy watching aurora, not to mention the potential for a little doomsday. But fear not; the sunspot region that spawned this monster flare is transiting the far side of the Sun as we speak, and mi ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
