March 4th Solar Flare

The starting of this month had begun with an intense solar flare from the sun. An active region on the sun unleashed a flare on March 4^th labeled as an X1.1-class solar flare. Solar flares are rated by letter with M being a medium eruption and C-class being a weak eruption.

This eruption ejected a fast moving cloud of plasma (otherwise known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME) into space. It wasn’t expected to hit Earth but it was expected to create minor geomagnetic storms. Some of these minor issues could include delaying of flights due to interference of radio waves, GPS systems not being able to connect to towers because of the interference, and satellite dishes also failing. I personally experienced Direct TV going down. The show had turned into a black screen and the next screen to follow was Direct TV apologizing because sometimes the sun interferes with its broadcasting.

The X-ray flux of X class flares increases the ionization of the upper atmosphere, which can interfere with short-wave radio communication and can heat the outer atmosphere. This can cause increased drag on low orbiting satellites, leading to orbital decay.

But solar flares also cause the aurora borealis (or Northern Lights) be able to be seen stronger and brighter and even further south than usual.

Although there were only minor issues from this solar flare, it is possible that Earth will see more of those and even stronger ones to come.

A lead researcher as NASA says that the region where the flare came from (AR1429) has been highly active recently. The region is at least 5 times larger than Earth and is actually expected to continue growing. If the flares continue to get stronger, they could be strong enough to knock out power grids and be hazardous to astronauts on the International Space Station. The astronauts could receive dangerous amount of radiation from the X and UV rays coming from the solar flare.

Considering the sun is rotating the active region towards Earth, the flares will have a more direct path to hit us. That being said, it could potentially cause much more damage.

These sun spots are created by intense magnetic activity. The spots can sometimes erupt into storms and send streams of plasma and charged particles into space. Every 11 years the sun’s activity hits a peak. The next solar maximum is expected to build up in 2013.