At 16:51 UTC yesterday (midday on May 14, 2024, for North America), we had the biggest solar flare of Solar Cycle 25 so far. It was an X8.8! And departing sunspot region AR3664 produced it, just as the sun's rotation was about to carry this region out of our view. In fact, the region was already partially blocked by the body of the sun, so might have been even bigger. The ESA/ NASA Solar Orbiter observed the X8.8 flare from the sun's far side and estimated that it might have been as large as X18! Thus sun activity is now considered very high.
Read the daily sun news at EarthSky.org:
https://earthsky.org/sun/sun-activity...NASA solar astrophysicist C. Alex Young is an EarthSky sun news producer and author:
https://earthsky.org/author/alexyoung/Raúl Cortés is an EarthSky sun news producer and author:
https://earthsky.org/author/raul-cortes/Deborah Byrd is an EarthSky sun news producer:
https://earthsky.org/author/deborahbyrd/ #sun #earthsky