While numerous of us were celebrating the end of 2023 and the coming of 2024, the Sun was having its own event blasting an X5.0 flare from sunspot area 3536. Records show this to be the most effective flare seen since 10 September 2017 when an X8.2 flare emerged. The flare is expected to show up around Jan 2– EEK thats today! The cause of so much disrupted sleep is solar activity and in particular, solar flares. A solar flare, as it appears in extreme ultra-violet light.
While numerous of us were celebrating the end of 2023 and the coming of 2024, the Sun was having its own event blasting an X5.0 flare from sunspot area 3536. Records show this to be the most powerful flare seen given that 10 September 2017 when an X8.2 flare emerged.
I reside in the UK in a county called Norfolk. It is a terrific backwoods with a coast line that deals with the north and there is no land in between it and the Arctic. That suggests that if we do get dealt with to auroral activity, Norfolk is a respectable place to see it, albeit its southerly latitude (52 degrees) compared to other parts of the UK. I do not survive on the north coast however I do have excellent friends who do, among whom is a little bit of an expert when it concerns the northern lights and honestly never seems to sleep. And so it is that I frequently get messages at quite unsociable hours telling me to go out and look! Sometimes, I simply plead for there not to be anything for a change so I can get some sleep!.
The cause of so much disrupted sleep is solar activity and in specific, solar flares. The Sun is a huge sphere of plasma, an electrically charged gas. As the Sun turns at different speeds (slower at the poles than at the equator) the plasma drags the magnetic field lines with it winding them up tighter and tighter. The field lines typically get twisted and when the stress is too much, there is a significant explosion as the kept up energy is launched as a flare..
A solar flare, as it appears in severe ultra-violet light. Some stars produce superflares comparable to this, but lots of times brighter and stronger than those from the Sun. Credit: NASA/SFC/SDO.
Flares are categorized by their brightness in X-rays in the wavelength 1 to 8 Angstrom Units. There are classes from A, B, C, M and X with A being the lowest and X the greatest.
The charged particles from the flare charge– pardon the pun– out into space and if they experience Earth, then they trigger the gas particles in our environment to radiance offering increase to the northern lights. I need to add at this point the northern lights are called aurora borealis and visible in the northern hemisphere while the southern lights are called aurora australis and visible in the southern hemisphere.
A photo of an aurora at Ny-Ålesund, Norway, November 2018. Image Credit: Ahmed Ghalib, VISIONS-2 payload group.
Keep a weather condition eye toward the north pole (or south if you are in southern hemipshere) and keep an appearance out on the space weather forecast sites like NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) for the most current updates. If the northern lights do put on a show, all you need to do is wrap up warm, get yourself outside, comfortable, wait and see.
Source: X5.0 Flare Closes Out the 2023 Year.
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