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There was a major solar flare earlier this week. The graph above shows a remarkable spike in X-ray radiation being received by one of NOAA's Earth-orbit satellites. Below is an image of the sun showing the source, a monster solar storm around sunspot number 930:
Even tho we are at the bottom of the current 11-year sunspot cycle, with very few sun spots appearing on the surface, this one packs a lot of X-ray energy, and a lot of it has been heading our way since Friday. Big solar events like this cause lots of problems for terrestrial communications. In particular, the ham radio bands are useless at the moment. (Read the story from NOAA.) Even NASA was worried about the astronauts on the space station, and told them to sleep in protected areas to avoid the radiation.
Most people would be totally unaware of this massive explosion on the sun and the effects raining down on us right now. But many people are seeing auroras. Here's one photographed in Iowa yesterday:
You can see more on the Space Weather website.
