Solar Flare Activity Early Friday, NASA Captures Video
Stargazers who were up early this morning were rewarded, as it is reported that the sun set off two solar flares, the second even brighter than the first. And for those of us who were not up early watching the skies, fear not, NASA captured a video of the event, which can be seen below.
The program coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Bill Murtagh spoke to the LA Times about the solar flares this morning. Murtagh explained that these solar flares are a result of an unsually "active sun."
"This is a little bit of a change this week, we're seeing a quite active sun," Murtagh said. "Three different sunspot clusters. … We were just down in the operations center looking at this. We can see this complex little magnetic structure on the sun that's going to produce these kind of flares."
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He went on to explain that the second solar flare was more intense than the first.
"This one was an X2, twice as intense as the X1 that just occurred," Murtagh said.
These solar flares were so intense that they actually caused a temporary radio blackout.
"A spot group just on the visible disk, dubbed Region 1882, generated an impulsive R3 (Strong) Radio Blackout at 0801 UTC (4:01 a.m. EDT) on October 25," a report by The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center said.
Here is the video NASA captured of the solar flares which occurred around 4 a.m. Friday morning.
