The future is so bright, shades must be worn.
The sunspot responsible for creating the strongest magnetic storm in two decades returns with a vengeance this week, meaning Earth may experience eclipses — but more northern lights, or aurora borealis.
The cluster, named AR3664, marked its return with a solar flare from the Sun’s southeastern limb. Spaceweather.com reported.
This particular solar flare of class X2.8 — the most powerful type the Sun is capable of producing — is one of the most intense. Solar events in recent years.
This event interfered with shortwave radio and triggered a coronal mass ejection, consisting of plasma and magnetic particles. erupted from the surface of the Sun. Fortunately, CMEs do not affect Earth.
That being said, we are not completely safe from these geomagnetic fragments. When AR3664 encountered Earth earlier this month, it produced a solar storm rated G5 – the highest level on the geomagnetic storm scale.
Now, as the solar cluster turns toward us again — when it will be fully facing Earth during the new moon on June 6 — it could create another galactic storm as particles continue to blast off the planet’s surface.
Last week, AR3664 emerged from the X12-class Solar System – the largest yet.
The starburst caused a large coronal mass ejection on the flanks of the Sun, according to Ryan French, a solar physicist at the National Solar Observatory in Boulder, Colorado. wrote In X.
Meanwhile, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the geomagnetic projectiles launched from the Sun this week won’t reach us for a while because of their distant origins.
“Once the sunspot begins to appear, we enter a window of opportunity [for viewing auroras],” French said.
If they occur, they are most visible on the nights before and after June 6.
