A sunspot the size of 5 Earths unleashed a spectacular solar flare this week
A NASA satellite tasked with keeping an eye on the sun captured the moment a solar flare burst from the star on Sunday.
The “mid-level” flare -- seen by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory -- erupted from a sunspot five times the size of the Earth. The sunspot is moving out of view of the Earth now due to the sun's rotation.
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Solar flares are huge eruptions of radiation that burst forth from the star when the sun’s magnetic fields break and release energy.
The April 17 flare was classified as an M6.7-class flare which are “a tenth the size of the most intense flares, the X-class flares,” NASA said.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) in Colorado keeps tabs on the sun’s activity from Earth. The center observed a “moderate radio blackout” when the flare occurred on Sunday.
SWPC also saw a coronal mass ejection -- a burst of hot plasma ejected from the sun during some flares -- associated with the flare, but it shouldn’t impact Earth.
Coronal mass ejections that are directed toward the planet can supercharge auroras at the poles or, if the solar storm is strong enough, disrupt the power grids on the planet, causing blackouts.
One of the most powerful events on record occurred in 1859. Now called the Carrington Event, that solar storm caused telegraph lines to malfunction all over the world.
“Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set the telegraph paper on fire,” NASA said. “Even when telegraphers disconnected the batteries powering the lines, aurora-induced electric currents in the wires still allowed messages to be transmitted.”
That kind of extreme flare is rare. However, a “Carrington-class” coronal mass ejection shot out into the solar system from the sun in 2012. The plasma eruption passed through Earth’s orbit but didn’t impact the planet.
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Miriam Kramer worked as a staff writer for Space.com for about 2.5 years before joining Mashable to cover all things outer space. She took a ride in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight and watched rockets launch to space from places around the United States. Miriam received her Master's degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University in 2012, and she originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee. Follow Miriam on Twitter at @mirikramer.
