Solar Flares with Activity, 2012
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In late January 2012, our nearest star offered a preview of what may be to come in the solar maximum of 2012-13. The storm has the potential to disrupt some communications and satellite systems and to bring auroras to high-latitude skies. The image above shows a solar flare as observed by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) at 03:27, Universal Time (Greenwich Time) on January 23. The high-latitude solar flare was measured as M8.7 in intensity, just below the most intense "X class" of flares. The eruption sent a stream of fast-moving, highly energetic protons toward Earth, provoking the most intense solar energetic particle storm, an S3 on NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center's scale, since 2005. The flare was accompanied by a coronal mass ejection (CME), a cloud of solar plasma that was ejected from the solar atmosphere in the direction of Earth. The CME was observed by the STEREO and SOHO spacecraft with an initial speed of more than 1, 400 mile per second.