Early this morning (Sept. 6), the sun released two powerful solar flares ‐ the second was the most powerful in more than a decade.
At 5:10 a.m. EDT (0910 GMT), an X-class solar flare ‐ the most powerful sun-storm category ‐ blasted from a large sunspot on the sun's surface. That flare was the strongest since 2015, at X2.2, but it was dwarfed just 3 hours later, at 8:02 a.m. EDT (1202 GMT), by an X9.3 flare, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). The last X9 flare occurred in 2006 (coming in at X9.0).
According to SWPC, the flares resulted in radio blackouts: high-frequency radio experienced a "wide area of blackouts, loss of contact for up to an hour over [the] sunlit side of Earth," and low frequency communication, used in navigation, was degraded for an hour. |