HUGE SOLAR FLARE ERUPTS FROM BIGGEST SUNSPOT IN 24 YEARS

Huge Solar Flare Erupts from Biggest Sunspot in 24 Years (Photos)
By Tariq Malik, SPACE.com, 25 October 2014.

The biggest sunspot on the face of the sun in more than two decades unleashed a major flare on Friday (Oct. 24), the fourth intense solar storm from the active star in less than a week.

This full-disk image of the sun shows the location of the major X3.1 solar flare (lower right) on Oct. 24, 2014. The solar flare erupted from the largest sunspot on the sun in 24 years. Credit: NASA/SDO.

The solar flare occurred Friday afternoon, reaching its peak at 5:41 p.m. EDT (2141 GMT), and triggered a strong radio blackout at the time, according to the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Centre. NASA's sun-watching Solar Dynamics Observatory captured stunning video of the huge solar flare [see below].

The flare erupted from a giant active sunspot known as AR 12192 and was classified as an X3.1-class solar storm - one of the most powerful types of solar storms on the sun - but it is not the first time the sunspot has made its presence known. [Biggest Solar Flares of 2014 in Photos]

"This is the fourth substantial flare from this active region since Oct. 19," NASA spokesperson Karen Fox wrote in a status update.

A massive X3.1 solar flare erupts from the giant sunspot AR 12192 on Oct. 24, 2014 in this close-up view from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, a spacecraft that constantly watches Earth's nearest star. Credit: NASA/SDO.

Indeed, on Sunday (Oct. 19), the sunspot fired off a major X1.1-class solar flare, then followed it up with an intense M8.7-class flare on Wednesday (Oct. 22) that was followed that same day by an X1.6 event.

Sunspots are regions of the sun forged by shifting magnetic fields that are cooler than their surrounding solar material, giving them their dark, blemish-like appearance.

The bright light in the lower right of the sun shows an X-class solar flare on Oct. 26, 2014, as captured by NASA's SDO. This was the third X-class flare in 48 hours, which erupted from the largest active region seen on the sun in 24 years. Credit: NASA/SDO.

Sunspot AR 12192 dwarfs the Earth and is comparable to Jupiter in its size, according to solar astrophysicist C. Alex Young with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre, who described the sunspot in his blog The Sun Today.

The sunspot is the largest of its kind since November 1990, and is larger than a monster sunspot that spawned a series of major solar flares over Halloween in 2003, Young wrote.

And on Thursday (Oct. 23), the sunspot was hard to miss during a spectacular partial solar eclipse that was visible from North America. Many of the skywatchers who captured photos of the solar eclipse remarked on the surprising sight of a giant sunspot on the face of the sun.

"This was my first time photographing a solar eclipse and I was thrilled to capture the sunspots as well," skywatcher Mark Ezell of Austin, Texas, wrote in an email on Thursday.

An X-class flare erupted from the sun on Oct. 25, 2014, as seen as a bright flash of light in this image from NASA's SDO. The image shows extreme ultraviolet light in the 131-angstrom wavelength, which highlights the intensely hot material in a flare and which is typically colorized in teal. Credit: NASA/SDO.

X-class solar flares are the most powerful eruptions on the sun. When aimed directly at Earth, X-class flares can potentially pose a danger to astronauts and spacecraft in space, and interfere with navigation, radio and communications signals. M-class flares are ranked as moderate sun storms that can supercharge the Earth's aurora displays. There are also weaker classes of solar storms that have little effect on Earth, including C-class, B-class and even A-class storms.

"Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation," Fox wrote in the NASA update. "Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however - when intense enough - they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel."

Infographic: Anatomy of Sun Storms & Solar Flares

The sun is an active star, one that teems with flares and solar eruptions on an 11-year solar weather cycle. See how the sun unleashes its solar weather storms in this SPACE.com infographic.

Credit: Karl Tate/SPACE.com

Top GIF image by The Weather Network.

[Source: SPACE.com. Edited. Some images added.]