X8.2 solar flare

Sunday, 10 September 2017 16:18 UTC

X8.2 solar flare

Sunspot region 2673 departs in style! The region is now behind the western limb but it still managed to produce it's fourth X-class solar flare: it erupted with an X8.28 (R3-strong) solar flare that peaked at 16:06 UTC.

This is the second strongest solar flare of solar cycle 24. Sunspot region 2673 was also responsible for the strongest solar flare of this solar cycle: X9.3 on 6 September! What an amazing sunspot region! You shall be missed!

With this very strong solar flare, type II en IV radio sweeps where detected and a new space radiation storm is ongoing. Also of note is that the solar flare was highly eruptive and an impressive coronal wave was seen on the difference imagery of SDO.

With the X8.2 solar flare, a huge and very fast Coronal Mass Ejection was launched into space, it was seen by the STEREO A coronograph instrument.

Any mentioned solar flare in this article has a scaling factor applied by the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), the reported solar flares are 42% smaller than for the science quality data. The scaling factor has been removed from our archived solar flare data to reflect the true physical units.

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