2023-07-05 04:00:55
A gigantic sunspot appeared on the surface of our star on June 27. Two days later, it had grown to a size of regarding 3.5 billion square kilometers, or ten times the width of our planet.
The July 2 X-class solar flare
Named AR3354, this colossal sunspot alerted scientists who feared it might spawn a series of potentially dangerous solar storms. After reaching its maximum size, the sunspot produced an M-class flare on June 29, before remaining quiet until July 2. On that day, it expelled an X-class solar flare, the most powerful, aimed directly at our planet.
The radiation from this huge eruption hit the Earth’s magnetic field (Earth has a magnetic field produced by the movements of its outer core –…), ionizing the gases in the upper atmosphere (The word atmosphere can have several meanings:) into a dense plasma ( In physics, plasma describes a state of matter made up of charged particles (ions, etc.) dense. This resulted in a dispersion (Dispersion, in wave mechanics, is the phenomenon affecting a wave in a…) radio signals, causing blackouts in the western United States and parts of the eastern Pacific.
A large plasma plume erupts from the Sun just before the emission of the X-class flare.
Credit: NASA/SDO
These disturbances lasted only regarding thirty minutes, but the situation (In geography, the situation is a spatial concept allowing the relative location of a…) might have been much worse. Indeed, researchers initially suspected that the eruption might have resulted in a coronal mass ejection (CME), a burst of high-velocity magnetized plasma. Fortunately, no CME was observed.
Sunspot AR3354 has not yet shrunk in size and may still be capable of releasing further M- and X-class flares, which might potentially launch CMEs toward Earth.
An enlarged image of the sunspot as it grew, when it was “only” 7 times the size of Earth wide.
Credit: NASA/ SDO/ Bum-Suk Yeom
Sunspots become larger and more frequent when the Sun reaches solar maximum, the most active part of its 11-year cycle. This latest flare is yet another sign that solar peak is rapidly approaching.
AR3354 is the largest sunspot region to appear this year and the second largest in this solar cycle. The total number of sunspots is also increasing faster than expected. The thermosphere (The thermosphere is the layer of Earth’s atmosphere above the ionosphere….), Earth’s second atmospheric layer, is warming faster than it has in the past 20 years, following the bombardments of geomagnetic storms.
Close-up view of gigantic sunspot AR3354 on June 29.
Credit: Michael Karrer
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