According to space weather experts, a hyperactive spot on surface of the sun has fired off two of the most powerful solar flares of the year in simply 24 hours, and is showing promising signs that it will unleash more solar storms over the course of the next several days. The active sunspot has actually went on overdrive on Mother's Day when it had erupted late Sunday night (May 12) with an X-class solar flare, which is the strongest type of solar storm possible, said NASA scientists in an update.
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| The sun had erupted with an X1.7-class solar flare on May 12, 2013. The flare had appeared as a bright point on the left of the sun in this full-disk view of NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory. It is a blend of two images of the sun recorded at different wavelengths of light |
This giant solar flare, which is categorized and registered as one of the largest eruptions the sun can unleash, had peaked Sunday night at 10:17pm EDT (02:17 GMT) and was captured on camera by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. It had sparked an hour-long high-frequency radio blackout, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center overseen by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Shortly after, on May 13, another eruption had followed midday on Monday by an even more powerful X2.8 solar flare, which is the third-strongest solar storm in reent years. A video of the huge solar flares seen together can be shown
here.
The Mother's Day solar flare had sent a super-hot wave of solar plasma, known as a coronal mass ejection, hurtling through space at about 2.6 million mph (4.3 million km/h). The second flare on Monday is known to send solar plasma streaking through space at a rate of 4.3 million mph (6.9 million km/h). However, the solar eruptions were not aimed at Earth so should not be posed as a threat to satellites and astronauts in orbit, claimed by NASA officials.
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| On May 13, 2013, an X2.8-class flare had erupted from the sun, the strongest flare of 2013 to date. This NASA image shows a close-up of the flare as seen by the Solar Dynamics Observatory in the 131 angstrom wavelength |
