Earthlings, be prepared – the Sun is firing out a barrage of solar storms, and they’ll soon be heading our way. The cause? A growing group of angry sunspots, stretching 120,000 miles across our star’s surface.
Sunspots and the area around them are where solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) form, bursts of electromagnetic radiation and solar particles blasted out into space by the Sun. When these hit Earth, they can mess with the atmosphere, causing communication blackouts.
At the moment the sunspots are not pointing directly towards us, but as the Sun continues its slow rotation – it takes about 27 days to spin once on its axis – eventually we’ll be right in the firing line.
The 1st of the group, named AR3491, first loomed into view on Nov 18, quickly followed by at least 5 more, forming a ‘solar archipelago’ of sunspots.
https://metro.co.uk/2023/11/24/sun-gearing-fire-massive-solar-storms-way-19870743/
