It's been a busy year on the sun, as it officially entered the peak of its roughly 11-year cycle of activity, known as solar maximum. In 2024, the sun launched over 50 X-class solar flares — the most ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. A spot on the sun 10 times larger than Earth has been seen ...

The sun is not a static, tranquil sphere of gas, but an active, turbulent star with magnetic fields that twist and snap in powerful eruptions. Among the most striking and energetic of these eruptions ...

A strong solar flare peaked just after 9 a.m. Tuesday, but what does that mean? Can it be seen from Earth?Tuesday's solar flare was not the first this year or even this month. Here is more information ...

The sun just erupted with a powerful X-class solar flare, causing radio blackouts across the Atlantic Ocean. The flare, which hit X2.3-class in strength, was emitted at 8:40 a.m. ET from a sunspot ...

A sunspot on the surface of our volatile star exploded yesterday, sending an extremely powerful solar flare flashing through space towards the Earth. The flare, which hit an X7.1-class in strength, is ...

In the span of two days last week, the sun released two strong solar flares — meaning the solar system experienced its most powerful explosions which can cause some communications blackouts on Earth, ...

The Sun emitted two strong solar flares, peaking at 4:48 a.m. and 2:36 p.m. ET on Saturday, June 1, 2024. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the Sun constantly, captured images of the ...

The Sun has just unleashed an M5-class solar flare, a powerful burst of radiation that signals a clear uptick in solar activity as the current cycle heads toward its peak. While this event is not the ...

BOULDER, Colo. — According to the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) in Boulder, a solar flare detected on the sun Thursday was the strongest flare since the beginning of this solar cycle in 2020.

Just as avalanches on snowy mountains start with the movement of a small quantity of snow, the ESA-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft has discovered that a solar flare is triggered by initially weak ...