Posted on 03/16/2004 8:45:49 PM PST by LibWhacker
A solar flare last Nov. 4 was at the time said to be at least X28 on a scale of intensity. That made it the strongest in modern times. And astronomers said at the time that it might have been stronger, but it saturated instruments on satellites used for analyzing the Sun's storms.
Solar flares are intense outburst of solar radiation that include X-rays and are often accompanied by ejections of charged material in giant clouds. Now researchers at the University of Otago in New Zealand say the flare was an X45. (All X-flares are major, and the larger the number the more intense.)
The researchers analyzed data from the upper atmosphere, effectively using it as a giant X-ray detector.
"This makes it more than twice as large as any previously recorded flare, and if the accompanying particle and magnetic storm had been aimed at the Earth, the damage to some satellites and electrical networks could have been considerable," said study member Neil Thomson. The outburst's location on the Sun, however, generated a space storm that delivered only a glancing blow by the time it reached Earth.
The finding was gleaned from a study, which had been going on at the time, of the ionosphere and the indirect effects of x-rays very low frequency (VLF) radio transmissions across the Pacific Ocean from the United States to receivers in Dunedin, New Zealand. The results will be detailed March 17 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
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