A major solar flare erupted from the sun on Thursday (Oct. 28) in the strongest storm yet of our star’s current weather cycle.
The sun fired off an X1-class solar flare, its most powerful kind of flare, at 11:17 a.m. EDT (1517 GMT), according to an alert from the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Group, which tracks space weather events.Â
The group warned that the eruption could spawn a wide-area radio communications blackout for high-frequency signals for about an hour. “Area of impact consists of large portions of the sunlit side of Earth, strongest at the sub-solar point,” it wrote in an email alert.
Related: The sun’s wrath: Worst solar storms in history
The most powerful X-class flares can interfere with radio and satellite communications and supercharge the planet’s aurora displays when they are aimed directly at Earth and accompanied by a massive eruption of solar particles, called a coronal mass ejection. Such eruptions send charged particles out from the sun at a whopping 1 million mph (1.6 million kph) or more, and typically take a few days to reach Earth.Â
Thursday’s flare appeared to originate from a sunspot called AR2887 currently positioned in the center of the sun and facing the Earth, based on its location. The sunspot was responsible for two moderate M-class solar flares earlier in the day, according to SpaceWeather.com, which also tracks daily sun weather.
The coronal mass ejection from a Tuesday flare up of AR2887 could deliver a “glancing blow” to Earth sometime on Friday (Oct. 30), SpaceWeather.com reported.Â
A new active sunspot, called AR2891, also recently fired off an M-class flare as it rotated toward the Earth-facing side of the sun. It is currently making its way across the face of the sun, as seen from Earth, a process that will take about two weeks.
The sun is in the early days of its current solar activity cycle, each of which lasts 11 years. The current cycle, called solar cycle 25, began in December 2019.
Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.Â
