A sunspot roughly three times the size of Earth is within our planet’s firing range, and may be sending out medium-grade flares in the near future.
“yesterday, sunspot The AR3038 was big. Today, it’s massive,” Tony Phillips, author of SpaceWeather.com (Opens in a new tab)wrote on Wednesday (June 22).
“The fast-growing sunspot doubled in size in just 24 hours,” Phillips added, noting that the magnetic field around it had the potential to explode Class M. solar flares towards our planet.
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Should a sunspot explode? Coronal mass ejectionor CME, for charged particles facing our planet, it is possible that these particles interact with our magnetic field and produce colored lights in our atmosphere, known as auroras.
However, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA’s) Space Weather Forecasting Center (Opens in a new tab)which monitors solar flares and other eruptions, has not issued any alerts for Earth’s current aurora borealis.
The sun has been particularly active this spring, sending out many Class M and Class X (strongest class) torches with activity growing in the average 11-year year. sunspot cycle.
Ejected coronal masses are usually harmless, and may produce brief radio dimming along with colored auroras. On rare occasions, ejected coronal masses can disturb basic infrastructure such as satellites or power lines.
That’s why both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are watching the sun all the time. In addition, NASA Parker Solar Probe The mission is to fly close to the sun periodically to learn more about the origins of sunspots and to better understand the space weather that the sun creates.
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