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| The NOAA’s Solar Ultraviolet Imager captured this image of a solar flare on Jan. 3, with the bright flash in the upper left, showing hot material in extreme ultraviolet light colorized in red and gold. |
The Sun unleashed a significant flare, peaking at 6:39 a.m. ET on Friday, Jan. 3, with the eruption captured by NOAA’s Solar Ultraviolet Imager aboard the GOES-East satellite. Solar flares like this are intense bursts of energy, capable of interfering with communication systems, power grids, navigation signals, and even posing threats to spacecraft and astronauts.
This particular flare has been classified as an X1.2 flare. X-class flares are the most powerful, with the number indicating the intensity. Data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, a key resource for understanding solar phenomena, is temporarily unavailable due to flooding at the data center that houses its information.
For more details on how this flare might impact Earth’s space weather, the public can access NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center at spaceweather.gov, the U.S. government’s authoritative source for solar forecasts and alerts. NASA continues to play a vital role in monitoring and studying the Sun’s behavior through its fleet of spacecraft, tracking solar activity, atmospheric changes, and the surrounding space environment.