Home > Cosmic Craziness > Giant Sunspot Shoots Out Intense X-Class Solar Flare, CME Directed Toward Earth

Giant Sunspot Shoots Out Intense X-Class Solar Flare, CME Directed Toward Earth

07/12/2012 Leave a comment Go to comments

“Big sunspot AR1520 unleashed an X1.4-class solar flare on July 12th at 1653 UT. Because this sunspot is directly facing Earth, everything about the blast was geoeffective. For one thing, it hurled a coronal mass ejection (CME) directly toward our planet. According to a forecast track prepared by analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab, the CME will hit Earth on July 14th around 10:20 UT (+/- 7 hours) and could spark strong geomagnetic storms. Sky watchers should be alert for auroras this weekend…

The UV pulse partially ionized Earth’s upper atmosphere, disturbing the normal propagation of radio signals around the planet. Monitoring stations in Norway and Ireland recorded the sudden ionospheric disturbance.

Finally, solar protons accelerated by the blast are swarming around Earth. The radiation storm, in progress, ranks ‘S1’ on NOAA space weather scales, which means it poses no serious threat to satellites or astronauts. This could change if the storm continues to intensify.” Source – Spaceweather.com.

Categories: Cosmic Craziness
  1. rachael's avatar
    rachael
    07/13/2012 at 1:53 AM
    Reply

    Myself and others have realized that the brightness of the sun is so illuminating as it was never before. I wear sunglasses and it doesn’t seem to help anymore against the brightness. Do others notice the difference in the sun?

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