NASA Spacecraft Catches A Huge Solar Flare

The Sun’s roaring again and it’s usually bad news when that happens. An active sunspot, Sunspot 1302, has suddenly grown vigorous and is releasing vast amounts of highly energetic charged particles hurtling out of the Sun. It released a huge solar flare on the 24^th of September and its hyperactivity continues unabated over the last few days. The activity was caught by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory or SDO.

Coronal Mass Ejection and a brilliant lightshow

NASA warned that a huge Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) or a Solar Flare is in progress. The CME occurred at about 8:15 AM EST, today i.e. on the 26^th of September. Upon reaching Earth this will cause a huge geomagnetic storm, interfering with radio communications everywhere. This will also produce scintillating auroras near the poles of the Earth. If you stay in the higher altitudes, remember to look up in the sky – the light show is due to the Sun.

This is Big!

Scientists use a Kp-index to indicate the enormity of the Solar flare. It is a scale from 0 to 9, 0 indicating no activity and 9 indicating hyperactivity. It tells us whether there will be a significant geomagnetic storm caused due to Solar activity, with any reading above Kp=4 denoting a geomagnetic storm. The 26^thSeptember solar flare was marked Kp=8! The solar flare was so huge that it could be heard on all radios across the world. Here’s a video from NASA.

The solar flare was marked as a X1.9 category flare, indicating that it had some X-ray components to it. However, this is much lower than the X6.9 solar flare on 9^th August or even the X2.2 flare on 15^thFebruary this year.