Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Apod 1.5

This weeks picture is from September 28th and features a large solar flare coming from a group of sunspots known currently as AR1302. This group of sunspots is very important or special because it is one of the most active groups in many years and it can even be seen without a telescope! The picture featured what is known as an X-class flare, or in layman's terms, a flare that could cause plant-wide radio black outs! This means the flare has to be huge in size, even for the sun. Overall, we have been lucky because AR1302 could have sent a very devastating solar flare our way but we have yet to be in the direct path of one.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110928.html

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