A Huge Sunspot Fires Off An Intense Solar Flare
This image of an M7.7 solar flare was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft on July 19, 2012. A gigantic sunspot unleashed an intense solar flare early Thursday (July 19), though the solar storm shouldn't pose any serious problems to us here on Earth, scientists say. The flare erupted from a sunspot known as AR 1520 at 1:13 a.m. EDT (0513 GMT) Thursday and peaked about 45 minutes later. The outburst qualifies as an M7.7-class solar flare, meaning it's a bit weaker than the sun's most powerful blast, X-class flares. The sun storm also produced a coronal mass ejection (CME), a huge eruption of solar plasma that can streak through space at speeds of 3 million mph (5 million kph) or more. CMEs that hit Earth can wreak havoc, spawning geomagnetic storms that can disrupt GPS signals, radio communications and power grids. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, a spacecraft that constantly watches the sun in different wavelengths of light, recorded a video o...