A major solar flare erupted from the sun on Thursday (Oct. 28) in one of the strongest storms of our star’s current weather cycle. The sun fired off an X1-class solar flare, its most powerful kind of flare, that peaked at 11:35 a.m. EDT (1535 GMT), according to an alert from the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), which tracks space weather events.
The flare caused a temporary, but strong, radio blackout across the sunlit side of Earth-centered on South America, the group wrote in an statement. NASA officials called the solar eruption a “significant solar flare,” adding that it was captured in real-time video by the space agency’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
A coronal mass ejection from the flare, a huge eruption of charged particles, could reach Earth by Saturday or Sunday (Oct. 30-31), just in time for Halloween, SpaceWeather.com reported. The eruption could supercharge Earth’s northern lights and potentially interfere with satellite-based communications.
“POW! The sun just served up a powerful flare,” NASA officials wrote on Twitter alongside a photo of the flare. Solar flares are massive eruptions of radiation from the sun that send charged particles streaming outward from the star. Flares are classified in a letter system, with C-class storms being relatively weak, M-class more moderate and X-class flares as the strongest. READ MORE
