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Solar Activity on the Rise:

Posted: 19 May 2013 05:08 PM PDT
http://www.eham.net/articles/30200


Faraway as it is, anyone could mistake the Sun for a smooth, uniform,
boring ball of gas but the reality could not be more different. Earlier
this week, in the space of two days, the Sun emitted four massive blasts of
radiation with Tuesday's solar flare being the strongest of the year so
far. The Sun's activity changes in intensity periodically, with its main
cycle taking an average of eleven years to complete. The present cycle,
cycle 24, started in 2008 and is expected to peak later this year. This
increase in solar activity leads to an increase in a number of a variety of
solar phenomena, such as sunspots, solar flares and coronal mass ejections
(CMEs). Solar flares are extremely strong bursts of energy that occur when
energy stored in the magnetic fields of the Sun's atmosphere is suddenly
released. A related phenomenon, coronal mass ejections are massive
eruptions in the solar atmosphere that release millions of tonnes of solar
material into space. Flares can fall into one of five categories: A, B, C,
M, or X, each category ten times stronger than the one before, with X-class
flares being the strongest. Additionally, each category, except X-class, is
further divided into nine subcategories, from 1 to 9. The most intense
flare ever recorded went as high as X28. This week's flares ranged in
intensity from X1 to X3.2.