Powerful flares fix on the Sun for the fourth day in a row

A series of flares is observed on the Sun for the fourth day in a row. On December 17, they wrote about this on the website of the Laboratory of X-ray Astronomy of the Sun of the Physics Institute. P.N. Lebedev RAS.

It is noted that scientists recorded 34 class C flares. On the night of December 17, a more powerful class M flare was recorded. The Sun’s activity index was raised to orange levels.

On Thursday morning Moscow time, there was a coronal mass ejection associated with a class C flare, but it is clarified that it was not directed towards the Earth.

Flares are classified according to power: A, B, C, M and X. Head of the Laboratory of X-ray Astronomy of the Sun of the Physical Institute named after P.N. Lebedev RAS Sergey Kuzin explained that the clouds of plasma, which the Sun throws out at such moments, in two or three days can lead to a magnetic storm on the Earth.

A weak storm can cause minor interruptions in the operation of power systems and affect the migration paths of birds and animals. Stronger effects on shortwave communications and navigation systems can also cause voltage surges in industrial networks.

Earlier it was reported that on the night of November 4, scientists recorded one of the most powerful magnetic storms in the past few years. It was noted that the geomagnetic activity index, which had been slowly decreasing in recent days to quiet values ​​(after flares at the end of October) almost immediately after midnight, jumped to a level of seven (with a maximum value of 9), which corresponds to a third-level magnetic storm on a five-point scale.

Prior to this, on October 31, laboratory scientists recorded a weak-level magnetic storm on Earth. It was a consequence of an outburst of the maximum class X1.0 that occurred on October 28 on the Sun. The process of X-ray radiation from the sun began at 18:17 Moscow time and lasted 31 minutes. On November 1, scientists announced the end of the magnetic storm.