Incredible Photos From Recent Solar Flare
This week the sun will be continuing it's flurry of solar activity. Initially fireing this on Thursday, March 8th, the same region on the sun is expected to produce another streak of solar flares.
This past week's flare was categorized as a M6.3-class flare, which is a mid-range size according to the Space Weather Prediction Center of the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.) Space weather scientists use five categories — A, B, C, M and X — to rank solar flares based on their strength and severity. A-class flares are the weakest types of sun storms, while X-class eruptions are the most powerful.
The M-class solar flare exploded from the same sunspot region, called AR1429, which has been particularly active all week. This dynamic region has already unleashed three strong X-class solar flares. On Tuesday (March 6), two powerful X-class eruptions triggered the strongest solar storm in eight years, Bob Rutledge, head of NOAA's Space Weather Forecast Office, told reporters today (March 9).
"When you take overall intensity and length — how long it persisted — we're confident in saying by some measures, it was the strongest storm we've seen since November 2004," Rutledge said. "That doesn't mean that between November 2004 and today we haven't had brief periods that were more intense. If you look at the storm overall for length and strength, it was the strongest storm since November 2004."
