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NASA captures images of strong solar flares:
Context
Recently, NASA recorded two high-intensity solar flares.
What are the features of these solar flares?
- Out of the two flares, the second one was more intense
- The flares were recorded since start of the sun cycle in December 2008
- The category of such solar flares is called X eruption.
How solar flares affects us?
- These radiation flares can disrupt communication satellites, GPS and power grids by reaching the upper earth atmosphere,
- These radiations also disrupt radio signals
- These X eruptions disrupted high frequency radio communications on the earth’s side facing the sun and low-frequency communications used in navigation.
What are the features of a sun cycle?
- The current cycle of the sun, which began in December 2008, saw the intensity of solar activity decline sharply, opening the way to the “solar minimum”.
- Solar cycles last on average eleven years.
- At the end of the active phase, these eruptions become increasingly rare but still can be powerful.
- Solar storms result from an accumulation of magnetic energy in some places.
- These jets of ionized matter are projected — at high speed into and beyond the crown of the sun —hundreds of thousands of kilometers outward.
