What’s Around the Bend

What’s Around the Bend

A sunspot hidden just behind the sun's southeastern limb is crackling with solar flares. The strongest so far, an M3-class eruption on March 6th at 04:57 UT, is circled in this extreme UV image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory:
A pulse of extreme UV radiation from the flare ionized the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere, causing a short-lived blackout of radio communications over Indonesia and surrounding waters: blackout map. Mariners and ham radio operators in the area would have noticed weak signals at frequencies below 10 MHz.

The source of the flare will be revealed in the days ahead as the sun's rotation turns the underlying sunspot toward Earth. Stay tuned.

From SpaceWeather.com