About an hour later, at 8:14 PM ET, March 6, the same region let loose an X1.3 class flare. ?An X1 is 5 times smaller than an X5 flare.
These X-class flares erupted from an active region named AR 1429 that rotated into view on March 2. ?Prior to this, the region had already produced numerous M-class and one X-class flare. ?The region continues to rotate across the front of the sun, so the March 6 flare was more Earthward facing than the previous ones. ?It triggered a temporary radio blackout on the sunlit side of Earth that interfered with radio navigation and short wave radio.
In association with these flares, the sun also expelled two significant coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are traveling faster than 600 miles a second and may arrive at Earth in the next few days. ?In the meantime, the CME associated with the X-class flare from March 4 has dumped solar particles and magnetic fields into Earth's atmosphere and distorted Earth's magnetic fields, causing a moderate geomagnetic storm, rated a G2 on a scale from G1 to G5. ?Such storms happen when the magnetic fields around Earth rapidly change strength and shape. ?A moderate storm usually causes aurora and may interfere with high frequency radio transmission near the poles. ?This storm is already dwindling, but the Earth may experience another enhancement if the most recent CMEs are directed toward and impact Earth.
In addition, last night's flares have sent solar particles into Earth's atmosphere, producing a moderate solar energetic particle event, also called a solar radiation storm. These particles have been detected by NASA's SOHO and STEREO spacecraft, and NOAA's GOES spacecraft. ?At the time of writing, this storm is rated an S3 on a scale that goes up to S5. ?Such storms can interfere with high frequency radio communication.
Besides the August 2011 X-class flare, the last time the sun sent out flares of this magnitude was in 2006. ?There was an X6.5 on December 6, 2006 and an X9.0 on December 5, 2006. Like the most recent events, those two flares erupted from the same region on the sun, which is a common occurrence.", "items": [], "extra_data": {} }, { "id": 349836, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10925/#media_group_349836", "widget": "Video player", "title": "", "caption": "", "description": "Massive Flare Gets HD Closeup.
Credit: NASA/GSFC/SDO
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The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) flew up on an Atlas V rocket, carrying instruments that scientists hoped would revolutionize observations of the sun. If all went according to plan, SDO would provide incredibly high-resolution data of the entire solar disk almost as quickly as once a second. When the science team released its first images in April of 2010, SDO's data exceeded everyone's hopes and expectations, providing stunningly detailed views of the sun. In the three years since then, SDO's images have continued to show breathtaking pictures and movies of eruptive events on the sun. Such imagery is more than just pretty, they are the very data that scientists study. By highlighting different wavelengths of light, scientists can track how material on the sun moves. Such movement, in turn, holds clues as to what causes these giant explosions, which, when Earth-directed, can disrupt technology in space. SDO is the first mission in a NASA's Living With a Star program, the goal of which is to develop the scientific understanding necessary to address those aspects of the sun-Earth system that directly affect our lives and society. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. built, operates, and manages the SDO spacecraft for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.SDO: Year One here.SDO: Year 2 here.Information about the individual clips used in this video is here.Watch this video on YouTube. || ", "release_date": "2013-02-11T10:00:00-05:00", "update_date": "2023-11-14T00:18:50.884075-05:00", "main_image": { "id": 468557, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011200/a011203/Flux_Rope_Blend_Still.jpg", "filename": "Flux_Rope_Blend_Still.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "Blended 131 angstrom and 171 angstrom images of July 19, 2012 flare and CME.", "width": 1920, "height": 1080, "pixels": 2073600 } }, { "id": 11000, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11000/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "NASA's Fermi Detects the Highest-Energy Light from a Solar Flare", "description": "During a powerful solar blast in March, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected the highest-energy light ever associated with an eruption on the sun. The discovery heralds Fermi's new role as a solar observatory, a powerful new tool for understanding solar outbursts during the sun's maximum period of activity.\"For most of Fermi's four years in orbit, its Large Area Telescope (LAT) saw the sun as a faint, steady gamma-ray source thanks to the impacts of high-speed particles called cosmic rays,\" said Nicola Omodei, an astrophysicist at Stanford University in California. \"Now we're beginning to see what the sun itself can do.\"A solar flare is an explosive blast of light and charged particles. The powerful March 7 flare, which earned a classification of X5.4 based on the peak intensity of its X-rays, is the strongest eruption so far observed by Fermi's LAT. The flare produced such an outpouring of gamma rays — a form of light with even greater energy than X-rays — that the sun briefly became the brightest object in the gamma-ray sky.At the flare's peak, the LAT detected gamma rays with two billion times the energy of visible light, or about 4 billion electron volts (GeV), easily setting a record for the highest-energy light ever detected during or just after a solar flare. The flux of high-energy gamma rays, defined as those with energies beyond 100 million electron volts (MeV), was 1,000 times greater than the sun's steady output. The March 7 flare also is notable for the persistence of its gamma-ray emission. Fermi's LAT detected high-energy gamma rays for about 20 hours, two and a half times longer than any event on record. Additionally, the event marks the first time a greater-than-100-MeV gamma-ray source has been localized to the sun's disk, thanks to the LAT's keen angular resolution. Flares and other eruptive solar events produce gamma rays by accelerating charged particles, which then collide with matter in the sun's atmosphere and visible surface. For instance, interactions among protons result in short-lived subatomic particles called pions, which produce high-energy gamma rays when they decay. Nuclei excited by collisions with lower-energy ions give off characteristic gamma rays as they settle down. Accelerated electrons emit gamma rays as they collide with protons and atomic nuclei.Solar eruptions are now on the rise as the sun progresses toward the peak of its roughly 11-year-long activity cycle, now expected in mid-2013. || ", "release_date": "2012-06-11T13:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:53:01.671992-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 475355, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011000/a011000/LAT_all-sky_flare_March_7_2012_labels_small.jpg", "filename": "LAT_all-sky_flare_March_7_2012_labels_small.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "During a powerful solar blast in March, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope detected the highest-energy light ever associated with an eruption on the sun. The discovery heralds Fermi's new role as a solar observatory, a powerful new tool for understanding solar outbursts during the sun's maximum period of activity.\"For most of Fermi's four years in orbit, its Large Area Telescope (LAT) saw the sun as a faint, steady gamma-ray source thanks to the impacts of high-speed particles called cosmic rays,\" said Nicola Omodei, an astrophysicist at Stanford University in California. \"Now we're beginning to see what the sun itself can do.\"A solar flare is an explosive blast of light and charged particles. The powerful March 7 flare, which earned a classification of X5.4 based on the peak intensity of its X-rays, is the strongest eruption so far observed by Fermi's LAT. The flare produced such an outpouring of gamma rays — a form of light with even greater energy than X-rays — that the sun briefly became the brightest object in the gamma-ray sky.At the flare's peak, the LAT detected gamma rays with two billion times the energy of visible light, or about 4 billion electron volts (GeV), easily setting a record for the highest-energy light ever detected during or just after a solar flare. The flux of high-energy gamma rays, defined as those with energies beyond 100 million electron volts (MeV), was 1,000 times greater than the sun's steady output. The March 7 flare also is notable for the persistence of its gamma-ray emission. Fermi's LAT detected high-energy gamma rays for about 20 hours, two and a half times longer than any event on record. Additionally, the event marks the first time a greater-than-100-MeV gamma-ray source has been localized to the sun's disk, thanks to the LAT's keen angular resolution. Flares and other eruptive solar events produce gamma rays by accelerating charged particles, which then collide with matter in the sun's atmosphere and visible surface. For instance, interactions among protons result in short-lived subatomic particles called pions, which produce high-energy gamma rays when they decay. Nuclei excited by collisions with lower-energy ions give off characteristic gamma rays as they settle down. Accelerated electrons emit gamma rays as they collide with protons and atomic nuclei.Solar eruptions are now on the rise as the sun progresses toward the peak of its roughly 11-year-long activity cycle, now expected in mid-2013.", "width": 903, "height": 469, "pixels": 423507 } }, { "id": 10933, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10933/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "Super Hot Tsunami", "description": "On March 6, 2012, giant waves known as \"solar tsunamis\" swept across the sun just after an eruption of an X5.4-class flare, the second largest solar flare since 2006. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) satellite mapped the evolution of the waves—some stretching across the entire 865,000-mile width of the sun—as they rippled outward from the flare at speeds greater than one million miles per hour. These waves, officially called \"EIT waves,\" may be what triggers fast coronal mass ejections, the spectacular clouds of ejected solar material that sometimes follow a flare, achieve escape velocity and hurtle into space. The video below shows two distinct waves emerging after the flare: the first spreads in all directions; the second is narrower, moving toward the southeast. It is likely that both are connected to one of the two coronal mass ejections spotted about an hour and a half after the eruption. || ", "release_date": "2012-03-22T00:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:53:10.968987-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 478255, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a010900/a010933/COVER_1024x576.jpg", "filename": "COVER_1024x576.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "A large solar flare gives rise to humongous waves on the sun.", "width": 1024, "height": 576, "pixels": 589824 } }, { "id": 3920, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3920/", "page_type": "Visualization", "title": "The Rising Solar Cycle: X5.4 Flare ('W' sunspot group) seen by SDO", "description": "Sunspot group 1429 of solar cycle 24 has launched an X5.4 flare can coronal mass ejection (CME) that is forecast to impact the EarthThis visualization has the full 4Kx4K frames from the 17.1 nm and 13.1 nm filters on the Solar Dynamics Observatory. 2Kx2K MPEG-4 movies are also available. || ", "release_date": "2012-03-07T14:00:00-05:00", "update_date": "2023-11-14T00:02:23.084209-05:00", "main_image": { "id": 478380, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003900/a003920/SDO_2012-03-07_171_X5Flare.00400.jpg", "filename": "SDO_2012-03-07_171_X5Flare.00400.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "The solar flare in the 171A (17.1nm) filter", "width": 4096, "height": 4096, "pixels": 16777216 } }, { "id": 10957, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10957/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "New Active Region on Sun Produces Three Flares Including an X1 on March 5", "description": "On March 2, 2012 a new active region on the sun, region 1429, rotated into view. It has let loose two M-class flares and one X-class so far. The M-class flares erupted on March 2 and on March 4. The third flare, rated an X1, peaked at 10:30 ET on March 4. A CME accompanied each flare, though due to the fact that this active region is still off to the side of the sun, they will likely have a weak effect on Earth's magnetosphere.The M class flare on March 4 flare also came with what's called a Type IV radio burst that lasted for about 46 minutes. Sending out broadband radio waves, these bursts can occur towards the end of a solar flare and are believed to be created by moving electrons trapped in great, looping magnetic fields left over from the initial flare. The bursts can interfere with radio communications on Earth. || ", "release_date": "2012-03-05T00:00:00-05:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:53:14.311841-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 478478, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a010900/a010957/March_5_Flare_Still.png", "filename": "March_5_Flare_Still.png", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "Short, edited video of X1 flare in 171.", "width": 1280, "height": 720, "pixels": 921600 } } ], "sources": [], "products": [], "newer_versions": [], "older_versions": [], "alternate_versions": [] }