Sun emits largest solar storm of 2013

PanARMENIAN.Net - Skywatchers should be on alert for possible geomagnetic storms this week that may trigger colorful displays of auroras, National Geographic reports.

On April 11 at 7:16 UT (3:16 am ET) a large, Earth-facing group of sunspots hurled a massive cloud of plasma and charged particles into space. Heading towards our planet at high speed, the Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) was first spotted by NASA’s sun-monitoring satellite, the Solar Dynamics Observatory, and is expected to slam into Earth’s protective magnetic field sometime in the morning hours of April 13.

According to Spaceweather.com, the front of the storm is already being felt in the form of space radiation (energized protons) speeding by Earth. The high influx of charged particles buffeting the magnetic field can potentially pose a hazard to everything from GPS signals, polar radio communications, power grids and circuit boards on orbiting satellites.

So far indications are that this current bout of space radiation is classified as a minor one- only causing disruption to high-frequency radio chatter in the polar regions.