The sun unleashed a powerful side flare last week.
Today’s X2.2 solar flare is the strongest solar flare of the current Solar Cycle thus far.
It peaked at 03:57 UTC and came from sunspot region 2992 which is rounding the western limb.
The eruption was fairly impulsive and the resulting CME is not earth-directed.pic.twitter.com/Aq38bXuFnA
The flare was classified as an X2.2.
The strongest flare ever observed was in excess of X28, in 2003.
The big blast is the latest indication our current solar cycle is heating up.
Our star goes through regular periods of high sunspot and flare activity roughly every decade or so.
We are currently building toward a peak of activity that will come around the middle of the 2020s.
Earlier this year,SpaceX reported that a flare had essentially frieda number of its Starlink satellites.
