Tag: Solar System

The sun started 2025 with a bang as it fired off a powerful solar flare this morning. The X-class solar flare peaked at an X.12 at 6:40 a.m. EST (1140 GMT) on Friday (Jan. 3), releasing a blast of energy from a sunspot region known as AR 3947 and triggering a radio blackout event for parts of the Southern Atlantic, Africa and parts of eastern South America. When these blackouts happen, they can result in a full or partial loss of high frequency (HF) radio signals in regions that are…

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In the final hours of Christmas Day, the sun fired off four solar flares within less than three hours. The biggest flare of the series, recorded at a M7.3, erupted from sunspot region AR3938 on Dec. 25 at 10:15 p,m. EST (0315 GMT on Dec. 26). Solar flares are ranked and categorized by their power on a 4-level classification scale, with M-class the second strongest to the beastly X-class at the top. According to Spaceweather.com, this was part of a group of four different flares that happened within two and…

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On the heels of a NASA spacecraft’s historic close flyby of the sun on Christmas Eve, scientists on Earth have one question on their minds: Did their probe survive as an epic Christmas gift, or is it a burned up lump of coal in space? For a few days, they simply won’t know, at least not until the spacecraft — NASA’s Parker Solar Probe — phones home with a simple “status beacon” on Friday (Dec. 27) to let its science team know it’s okay. But scientists behind the spacecraft’s sun…

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It’s been a busy year on the sun, as it officially entered the peak of its roughly 11-year cycle of activity, known as solar maximum. In 2024, the sun launched over 50 X-class solar flares — the most powerful type of solar flare — at Earth. Solar flares are categorized by the level of X-rays they produce in a specific wavelength range (1 to 8 angstroms). Solar flare classes follow a logarithmic scale, with each flare class — C, M and X — 10 times stronger than the previous one.…

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A NASA spacecraft is about to give astronomers an epic early Christmas present with the closest ever flyby of the sun on Dec. 24, but if you’re wondering exactly when the ambitious solar encounter will occur, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered. The NASA spacecraft, called the Parker Solar Probe, is on course for what will be a record-setting close flyby of the sun on Christmas Eve, when it will fly through the star’s outer atmosphere at 6:53 a.m. EST (1153 GMT) and pass within 3.8 million miles (6.1 million…

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