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“Solar Storms Result in Sunspot As Big As Earth”
by Mail Oline   
October 23rd, 2014

First solar storm from huge sunspot reaches Earth and knocks out satellites - and more could be on their way

Solar radiation knocked out some radio communication on Earth yesterday.  It came from a giant sunspot seen on the surface of the sun recently Sunspot AR12192 is 14 times larger than Earth and almost as big as Jupiter.  The Met Office tells MailOnline it might be the largest sunspot in 25 years.  It is so big that it can be seen in images of the sun from Earth's surface.  This particular flare from the sunspot was brief but strong It follows three days of severe storms on the sun.  'It would seem to be just a matter of time before another strong explosion occurs,' said spaceweather.com's Tony Phillips

A monster storm on the sun's surface has unleashed a solar flare in the direction of Earth - and there could be more to come.

The event temporarily blacked out a few radio communication systems before weakening.

The storm came from a large group of sunspots and hit Earth between 10 am and 11 am EDT (2pm and 3pm BST) yesterday.

Yesterday's flare was an X1.6, which is a million times the combined yield of every single nuclear weapon on Earth.

'The sun erupted with another significant flare today, peaking at 10:28 a.m. EDT on Oct. 22, 2014,' revealed Nasa.

'Nasa’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured images of the event, which occurred in the lower half of the sun.

'This flare is classified as an X1.6 class flare.

'X-class flares denote the most extreme flares.

'This is the third substantial flare from the same region of the sun since Oct. 19.'

Dr Young of Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center added: ‘It continues to grow in size and complexity.'

According to experts at thesuntoday.org, 'As of Oct. 22, 2014 (11 UT) the region’s trailing spots have an area of 2410 MH or millionths of a visible solar hemisphere.

'The largest up until now had been AR11967 on Feb. 5, 2014, measuring 1580 MH. MH is a standard measure used by astronomers for area.

'Just to provide some scale, the surface area of Earth is 169 MH - this means that AR12192 is 14 times larger than the surface area of Earth.'

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