Eyes in the sky
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A geomagnetic storm of surprising intensity broke out on Wednesday October 2 and Thursday October 3 on the surface of the Sun. Although it should not cause any damage, beautiful northern lights are to be expected in high latitudes… and perhaps in France.
The first alert arrived during the night of Tuesday October 1 to Wednesday October 2, at 12:20 a.m. Paris time: “A major X7.1 class solar flare has peaked, announces the SpaceWeatherLive website. The flare occurred near sunspot region 3842, near the center of the Earth-facing solar disk. This is the second strongest flare of the current solar cycle! A superb burst of activity after a relatively calm period, with the numerous sunspot areas observable at the moment!”
Created by two Belgians passionate about space weather, SpaceWeatherLive provides real-time information on solar activity, and automatically relays the most notable events based on observations from telescopes aimed at the Sun. To observe solar flares in particular, these intense and localized emissions of electromagnetic waves, it is above all the NASA satellite SDO (“Solar Dynamics Observatory”) which does the job. It has been in Earth orbit since 2010, its objectives permanently pointed at our star to watch it evolve.
There are things to see at the moment… The Sun, whose activity varies according to cycles of eleven years on average without us
