It’s the sunspot region you just don’t want to leave!
Beastly sunspot AR3697 is making headlines again ahead of another outing. The sunspot region, formerly known as AR3664, produced the historic geomagnetic storm that led to May’s global auroras.
On Saturday (June 8), the sunspot released an M9.7 solar flare, the second strongest type on the classification scale. The explosion was powerful enough to produce the strongest radiation storm since 2017, according to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). These types of events can pose a risk of impacting space launch operations and satellites, and can also disrupt shortwave radio signals.
Solar flares are intense bursts of electromagnetic radiation that emanate from sunspots on the surface of our sun. They are classified into letter groups (X, M, C, B, and A) according to their size, with Class X flames being the most powerful. Within each of these classes, numbers from 1 to 10 (and beyond for Class X flares) indicate the relative strength of a flare. This means that M-class flames like this are 10 times weaker than X-class flames, but are 10 times stronger than C-class flames.
The intense solar flare on Saturday (June 8) was the strongest solar flare or “S” storm since September 2017. pic.twitter.com/NNVvBrLHeKJune 10, 2024
The event was recorded as strong (S3) on NOAA’s Space Weather Scale for Solar Radiation Stormsand caused a major radio outage in the north polar region.
After Saturday’s explosion, energetic, fast-moving protons began their journey toward Earth.
Upon arrival, the particles interacted with the Earth’s magnetic field and were directed to the poles where they absorbed shortwave radio transmissions. This is known as a polar cap absorption (PCA) event, similar to what happened in July 2023.
Saturday’s M9.7 class eruption also dropped one extraction of the coronal mass (CME) that could approach Earth’s outer atmosphere today (June 10) and lead to a geomagnetic storm.
Although it is not predicted to be anywhere near the end The appearance of the solar storm in MayA Geomagnetic Storm Watch remains in place by NOAA’s SWPC for the conditions at the G2 level. With the right conditions, the aurora may be possible to see over several northern and upper Midwestern states from New York to Idaho on Monday night (June 10). You can see the forecast for tonight and the following evening here.
On Monday (June 10), Region 3697 released an even stronger solar flare, a magnitude X1.5 at 7:08 a.m. EST (1108 GMT). Parts of Earth’s sunward side may experience temporary or complete loss of high frequency (HF) radio signals. According to SWPC predictionsolar activity is expected to be at low to moderate levels for the next few days as Region 3697 orbits out of sight.
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Image Source : www.space.com