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Third biggest sun BLAST ever today
16:12 p.m. EST Oct 28, 2003
Our expeditions around the world have been in trouble lately with regards to their satellite communications. As they all had used different satellite connections successfully, but all of a sudden simultaneously reported the exact same problems, we guessed there was an atmospheric disturbance. The next day a solar storm was confirmed. Late Saturday the connections were fine again, but today the problems seemed to return.
The European space agency ESA now reports that the third most powerful solar X-ray flare on record, a remarkable X17.2 category explosion, erupted from sunspot 10486 today.
"This explosion hurled a ‘coronal mass ejection’ (CME) almost directly toward Earth, which could trigger bright aurorae when the material reaches us in about a day. The Earth was immediately affected by intense X-ray radiation, which ionized the upper layers of the atmosphere, causing serious disruption to radio communications."
This kind of a proton storm can damage satellites and is space walking astronauts biggest fear. Check out the awesome image of today's blast on ESAs site.
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