Our star experienced a series of giant outbursts, perhaps the most spectacular being the powerful coronal mass ejection and solar flare that erupted from the far side of the sun on February 15.

Depending on the size, the volcanic eruption could be in the most powerful class our sun can do: a Class X flare.
Because the flare and CME are pointed away from Earth, it is unlikely that we will see any of the effects associated with a geomagnetic storm, which occurs when material from the eruption collides with Earth’s atmosphere.

These include communications outages, power grid fluctuations, and the aurora borealis. But the upsurge in activity indicates that we may expect such storms in the near future.

“This is the second active region on the far side of this size since September 2017. If this region remains massive as it rotates on the Earth-facing side of the sun, it can give us some flares,” astronomer Janoy Chau, of the helioscience group at Stanford University told SpaceWeather. stunts”.

According to SpaceWeatherLive, which tracks solar activity, the sun erupted every day in February, with some days seeing multiple flares. This includes three of the second most powerful flares, the M1.4 class flares on February 12th; the M1 on February 14; and M1.3 on February 15. There were also five M-Class flares in January.

The moderate geomagnetic storm that struck 40 newly launched Starlink satellites from low Earth orbit followed a Class M flare that occurred on January 29. Rays from a solar flare usually take a few days to reach Earth, depending on how quickly the matter travels. The remaining flares that occurred in February so far have been in the mildest C category.
However, while this may sound intimidating, it is very normal for our Sun, as it ramps up towards and during solar maximum – the most dynamic time during its activity cycle.

While the Sun appears very consistent to us here on Earth on a daily basis, it actually goes through 11-year activity cycles, with a clearly defined minimum and maximum. This cycle depends on the sun’s magnetic field, which fluctuates every 11 years, as the north and south magnetic poles change.

Solar minimum – characterized by minimal sunspot activity and flare – marks the end of one cycle and the beginning of a new one, and occurs when the sun’s magnetic field is at its weakest.

This is because the Sun’s magnetic field controls its activity: sunspots are temporary regions of strong magnetic fields, while coronal mass ejections that erupt from solar flares are produced by magnetic field lines refracting and reconnecting.

The most recent solar minimum occurred in December 2019.

Sunspots are formed when the solar magnetic field is intertwined. This occurs because the solar equator rotates faster than higher latitudes. Currently, there are 111 sunspots on the Sun, although not all of them are actively exploding.

The solar maximum is set to occur in July 2025. It can be difficult to predict how active any given cycle will be, because we don’t know what’s driving it (recent research suggests it’s an 11.07-year planet aligned), but scientists in 2020 found Evidence that we may be entering the strongest cycle on record yet.

It remains to be seen whether the rest of the cycle will continue in the same vein, but the solar cycle is definitely something we are here for, provided it does not advance the devastating Carrington event.

Meanwhile, you can keep up with solar activity by following SpaceWeather, SpaceWeatherLive, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center.