The Sun has experienced four powerful flares, one of which could cause a geomagnetic storm on Earth. This is an extremely rare event as all 4 explosions happened at the same time, whereas normally there are only two explosions.
The coronal mass ejection is expected to reach Earth in the coming days. It can cause bright auroras and problems with radio communication and satellites.
Sensors and visual observations recorded four solar flares that occurred simultaneously on April 23. There is a good chance that one of these flashes launched a large-scale coronal mass ejection to Earth, which will reach our magnetosphere and cause a geomagnetic storm in the coming days.
Around eight o’clock in the morning Lithuanian time, an extremely rare event took place. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory saw four flares erupt from three different groups of sunspots hundreds of thousands of kilometers apart, and between the dark spots was a large magnetic filament, a loop of plasma suspended above the Sun’s surface. The area between them occupied about a third of the surface of the Sun facing Earth.
It is not clear what the total force of the explosion was. But given the large area covered by sunspots, it’s highly likely that “at least some of this explosion will be directed toward Earth.”
