NOAA also said this was the biggest flare of the current 11-year solar cycle, which is nearly its peak. Earth should be in the clear as the flare erupted from a part of the sun moving away from ...

A massive light bulb-shaped cloud of plasma and charged particles, called a coronal mass ejection, was unleashed by the sun on Aug. 20, 2012.

Within the next couple of days, solar activity associated with the flare could also produce auroras as far south as New York in the East and Idaho in the West, forecasters said.

In May 2024, the largest solar flare since 2017 was detected, ranking at an X-8.7 magnitude. Then in 2025, a flare May 13 was classified as an X-1.2 , and another the next day was listed as an X-2.7 .

The solar explosion was measured as an M4.4 flare. Solar flares are categorized as small C-class flares, medium-sized M flares and major X-class flares. Each class also has subcategories from 1 to ...

That flare was the strongest since 2015, at X2.2, but it was dwarfed just 3 hours later, at 8:02 a.m. EDT, by an X9.3 flare, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's ...

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare – as seen in the bright flash in the lower right portion of the image– at 11:57 p.m. EST on April 19, 2022.

This flare was categorized as an X2.8 flare. The X indicates the class of flare, with X being the strongest and other less powerful classes being A, B, C, and M.The 2.8 number indicates the power ...

Three top-tier X-class solar flares launched off the sun between Wednesday and Thursday. The first two occurred seven hours apart, coming in at X1.9 and X1.6 magnitude respectively. The third, the ...

The sun unleashed its most powerful solar eruption in more than three years on Sunday (Nov. 29). The solar flare, which is a sudden, bright explosion of electromagnetic energy, measured as an M4.4 ...

In the meantime, it’s still wild to see events like Monday’s solar flare in such detail—and thankfully at such a distance. More deals, reviews, and buying guides.

As solar activity ramps up in the sun’s 25th cycle, scientists worry that this week’s solar weather is merely prophesying a more disruptive solar flare, such as the one that hit Earth in 1859.