Solar flare what is it

The particles interact with molecules of atmospheric gases to cause the famed glowing red and green colors. What a stunning night of Aurora! This was a little over an hour ago pic. Northern lights from our back deck last night. My first time seeing the Aurora, a bucket list event for me! Taken with my iPhone. You know it's a wild aurora when you can take these in town on a phone.

Compared to X- and M-class events, C-class flares are small with few noticeable consequences here on Earth. Solar flares are different to 'coronal mass ejections' CMEs , which were once thought to be initiated by solar flares. CMEs are huge bubbles of gas threaded with magnetic field lines that are ejected from the Sun over the course of several hours.

Although some are accompanied by flares, it is now known that most CMEs are not associated with flares. They are distinct from the everyday solar wind due their association with highly energetic eruptions. Solar outbursts roughly follow an year cycle of maximum and minimum activity, although the cycle time period has been known to vary from 8 to 15 years.

A magnetic polarity flip between northern and southern sunspots means one complete cycle is actually 22 years. The flare caused a temporary, but strong, radio blackout across the sunlit side of Earth centered on South America, the group wrote in an statement. NASA officials called the solar eruption a " significant solar flare ," adding that it was captured in real-time video by the space agency's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

A coronal mass ejection from the flare, a huge eruption of charged particles, could reach Earth by Saturday or Sunday Oct. The eruption could supercharge Earth's northern lights and potentially interfere with satellite-based communications.

Related: The sun's wrath: Worst solar storms in history. A star tour from the inside out — The greatest missions to the sun of all time. The sun just served up a powerful flare," NASA officials wrote on Twitter alongside a photo of the flare. Solar flares are massive eruptions of radiation from the sun that send charged particles streaming outward from the star.