A powerful class X flare occurred on the Sun: It caused some problems on Earth, too (video)

On July 2, 2023, a powerful class X flare occurred on the Sun, which caused some problems on our planet as well. So, the outbreak, according to Space.com, dealt a "blow" to the Earth's atmosphere and caused a radio outage in some regions of the United States and the Pacific Ocean.

According to the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory, the flare occurred at 15:14 EST (23:14 Yerevan time). According to NASA, it was a bright ultraviolet flare, which was assigned class X, that is, the most powerful type of solar flare in existence.

The source of the outbreak was the huge sunspot AR3354: its width is 7 times the width of the Earth. According to the Spaceweather resource, the flash radiation ionized the Earth's upper atmosphere, which led to the blackout of shortwave radio communications over the western regions of the United States and the Pacific Ocean. The shutdown lasted about 30 minutes.

On March 28, another powerful X-class flare occurred on the Sun. The intensity of this flare was estimated by the Х1.2 index.

Another fairly powerful X1.1 flare occurred on February 11. On the evening of January 9, the most powerful flare of this year took place on the Sun, and it was “awarded” the X1.9 class. This was the second strongest flare in the last five years; the first one took place in September 2017. And this year, the first flare of class X occurred on January 6 at 4:57am Armenia time, and it was awarded class X1.2.