Looking Back: The Record Flare for Solar Cycle 24
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- Visualizations by:
- Tom Bridgman
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- Scientific consulting by:
- William D. Pesnell
- View full credits
On August 9, 2011 at 3:48 a.m. EDT, the sun emitted an Earth-directed X6.9 flare, as measured by the NOAA GOES satellite. These gigantic bursts of radiation cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to harm humans on the ground, however they can disrupt the atmosphere and disrupt GPS and communications signals. In this case, it appears the flare is strong enough to potentially cause some radio communication blackouts. It also produced increased solar energetic proton radiation — enough to affect humans in space if they do not protect themselves.
As of March 2014, this flare is the largest of solar cycle 24.
Here are the raw images used in creating the components in Sun Unleashes X6.9 Class Flare on August 9, 2011
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, the SDO Science Team, and the Virtual Solar Observatory.
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Animator
- Tom Bridgman (Global Science and Technology, Inc.) [Lead]
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Writer
- Scott Wiessinger (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
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Scientist
- William D. Pesnell (NASA/GSFC) [Lead]
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Producer
- Scott Wiessinger (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
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Project support
- Ian Jones (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Datasets used in this visualization
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SDO AIA 335 (335 Filter)
ID: 748This dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/
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SDO AIA 304 (304 Filter)
ID: 677This dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/
See all pages that use this dataset -
SDO AIA 193 (193 Filter)
ID: 679This dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/
See all pages that use this dataset -
SDO AIA 171 (171 Filter)
ID: 680This dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/
See all pages that use this dataset -
SDO AIA 131 (131 Filter)
ID: 730This dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/
See all pages that use this dataset
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.