Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Whoa, an X4.9 Flare!

This morning the Sun released an X4.9 flare from AR 11990 at 13 S, 78 E on the solar disk. It can be seen in this AIA 94 image as the bright area on the left of the image. It appears that there is a filament leaving the Sun as well in this image from 0047 UTC.

The flare lasted from 0039 UTC until 0103 UTC. The area of impact would be the sunlit side of Earth, with the greatest effects at the sub-solar point. Any coronal mass ejection from this location is unlikely to hit the Earth but might be measured by the STEREO spacecraft.