On Saturday (June 8), the sunspot fired off a M9.7-class solar flare, the second strongest type on the classification scale. The flare was powerful enough that it produced the strongest radiation storm since 2017, according to NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). These types of events can pose a risk of impact to space launch operations and satellites, and can also disrupt shortwave radio signals.
Solar flares are intense bursts of electromagnetic radiation that originate from sunspots on our sun's surface. They are classified into lettered groups (X, M, C, B and A) according to their size, with X-class flares being the most powerful. Within each of these classes, numbers from 1 to 10 (and beyond for X-class flares) denote a flare's relative strength. That means M-class flares like this one are 10 times weaker than X-class flares but are 10 times stronger than C-class flares.
Source: www.space.com
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