NASA’s orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the burst of the Sun’s flare from the highly active spot. Quoted from SINDOnews from the Space.com page, Saturday (2/4/2022), the spacecraft observed Earth’s parent star from a distance of 36,000 kilometers above the planet’s surface.
From these observations recorded a flare, which is classified as type M of medium strength, on Thursday, March 31, 2022. The impact of this flare eruption can trigger radio wave blackouts and present an amazing aurora phenomenon on Earth earlier this week.
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A class M flare is a fairly powerful flare, a sudden release of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun that travels at the speed of light. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ranks this beacon as M9.6, which means it’s not too far off to be the strongest type, X-class.
Solar flares can interfere with high-frequency radio communications because the X-rays and extreme ultraviolet radiation emitted ionize the upper part of Earth’s atmosphere, the ionosphere. “The flare caused a moderate radio blackout when it hit Earth,” NOAA said in a statement quoted by Space.com.
The ionosphere extends from 48 kilometers to 965 km above the planet’s surface and includes the outer layers of the atmosphere: the exosphere, the thermosphere and part of the mesosphere. The Solar Dynamics Observatory shoots the entire solar disk at various wavelengths every ten seconds.
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The result provides an image with a resolution 10 times higher than that of a high-definition television. This color image specifically shows flares in the extreme ultraviolet part of the spectrum highlighting its high temperatures.
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