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A medium-intensity solar flare hit the Earth's magnetosphere in the early hours of Monday, Spaceweather.com reported. It is unlikely that a coronal discharge will follow the solar activity, and if it does, whether will head toward Earth. The recent solar flare came from the sunspot AR 3141, which has grown in size in the past 24 hours, EarthSky.org said in its report. The eruption was classified as an M5.2, even where M denotes the class of solar flares and is a medium-intensity eruption. In comparison, classes A, B, and C are low-intensity events, while Class X flares are wildly the...

A Primer on Space Weather Our Star, the Sun We all know that the Sun is overwhelmingly important to life on Earth, but few of us have been given a good description of our star and its variations. The Sun is an average star, similar to millions of others in the Universe. It is a prodigious energy machine, manufacturing about 3.8 x 1023 kiloWatts (or kiloJoules/sec). In other words, if the total output of the Sun was gathered for one second it would provide the U.S. with enough energy, at its current usage rate, for the next 9,000,000 years....

The severe geomagnetic storm bombarding the Earth on Thursday was expected to disrupt radio, television and cell-phone communications worldwide and could force airlines to reroute passenger flights that normally fly over the North Pole. Power-grid operators will have to make sure their systems do not overload from induced current, and satellites in close Earth orbits will need to have their positions constantly monitored as the atmosphere expands from the additional heat and frictional drag increases. "It's really hitting the Earth's magnetic field pretty hard," Joseph Kunches, lead forecaster at the NOAA Space Environment Center in Boulder, Colo., told FOXNews.com. "It's...

**** GEOMAGNETIC STORM IN PROGRESS **** A geomagnetic storm began on December 14 at 1416 UTC (9:16 A.M. EST). The Mauna Loa Solar Observatory (MLSO), operated by the High Altitude Observatory in Boulder Colorado, is allowing SEC to use their latest H-alpha and Helium-I images while the SEC GOES SXI images are unavailable. A solar flare on 13 December at 0240 UTC (12 December, 9:40 P.M. EST) from NOAA Region 930 produced strong radio blackouts (R3) ... R 3 Strong HF Radio: Wide area blackout of HF radio communication, loss of radio contact for about an hour on sunlit...

Solar activity remains very high and shows no signs of abating. Sunspot 798/808 has unleashed seven X-class solar flares since Sept. 7th. Forecasters say there's a 75% chance of more X-flares during the next 24 hours, possibly causing radio blackouts and radiation storms. Coronal mass ejections hurled into space by these explosions could hit Earth's magnetic field in the days ahead. Sky watchers, particularly in northern places like Canada and Alaska, should remain alert for auroras. The best time to look is local midnight. The sun's 27-day rotation is slowly turning sunspot 798 to face Earth. Explosions in the coming...