March 7, 2023: In just three months of 2023, this was the seventh such explosion from the Sun. Continue reading to know more!
A radio blackout took over a few parts of southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, due to a strong explosion flaring up from the Sun, affecting the top layer of the Earth's atmosphere. It has been classified as an X1.2 flare, under an X-class Sun-flare category of the most intense flares (1.2 denotes the strength).
The eruption stemmed from sunspot AR3256 near the southwestern limb of the Sun, and was captured by Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory. Solar flares are brief eruptions of intense high-energy radiation from the surface of the Sun.
These high-intensity flares can disrupt radio communications, electric power grids, and navigation signals, and negatively impact spacecraft and astronauts. This was the seventh such explosion from the Sun in just three months of 2023, when only seven such flares emerged from the Sun in 2022. Four solar flares, 22 coronal (corona is the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere) ejections, and a very powerful geomagnetic storm were triggered by the Sun in just the last week.
As the Sun moves closer to its peak activity, the various phenomena revolving around its busy surface are also skyrocketing. The event comes in the background of yet another powerful geomagnetic storm hitting Earth, the strongest in three years, which also stemmed from a massive explosion from a large hole in the Sun’s corona, towards the southern hemisphere.
Geomagnetic storms are caused when major disturbances hit the Earth's magnetosphere, that area of space, around a planet, that is controlled by its magnetic field.
