A Massive Sunspot That Could Unleash Significant Solar Flares is Pointed Right at Us

upstart writes:

A Massive Sunspot That Could Unleash Significant Solar Flares Is Pointed Right at Us:

Sunspots can throw off powerful solar flares that disrupt radio communications on Earth and sometimes impact the power grid. Space weather watchers are keeping a close eye on a dark and volatile spot on the sun that's grown dramatically this week.

Between Sunday and Monday, Sunspot AR3038 more than doubled in size, making it several times wider than Earth's diameter, and it's continued to expand in the past 48 hours, according to NASA heliophysicist C. Alex Young, writing at EarthSky.

Sunspots are darkened, cooler areas on the sun's surface with unstable magnetic fields, and they can produce solar flares and coronal mass ejections of charged particles and plasma. These flares and ejections occasionally cause chaos for electrical and radio communications systems here on Earth.

Over the last day, the mega-sunspot has let off a pair of minor, C-class solar flares while pointing straight at Earth, but Astronomer Tony Phillips reports at Spaceweather.com that "Sunspot AR3038 has a 'beta-gamma' magnetic field that harbors energy for (medium strength) M-class solar flares."

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