SOLAR FLARE: At 1740 UT on Sept. 7th, Earth-orbiting satellites detected a major solar flare, X13-class or stronger, coming from the sun's eastern limb. The source of the explosion was probably returning sunspot 798, which sparked strong auroras in August.

http://www.spaceweather.com/

"... or stronger ..." Indeed!

It was a giant X-17.1 flare!!

The source of the halloween aurora 2003 was a X-17.2 flare.

CME animation: http://www.magnetsturm.de/temp/cme_20050907.gif

Animation of x-ray images: http://www.lmsal.com/solarsoft/latest_even...1717_sxilm.html

By a huge coincidence only ~14 hours before, I had been looking at the loop that this flare came from with the new H-Alpha telescope our department has just bought!

Very cool!

Thanks for letting us know.

James

There was another major flare at 21:05 UT Sept 8th - X5.


.....and is something happening right now?

http://solar.spacew.com/sunnow/

This X-17.1 was the fourth largest solar flare ever observed.

http://www.spaceweather.com/solarflares/topflares.html

Amazing picture!

The ghostly light show was triggered by solar particles spewed from the sun during series of flares that began on Sept. 7. A particularly active sunspot, known as AR 798, produced nine X-class solar flares during that series, though they had little effect on Earth aside from brief radio blackouts, NASA officials said.

The latest solar flares made September 2005 the most active with the Sept. 7 flare – classified as an X-17 event – the fifth (and fourth) largest ever observed.

Auroral Ring:

And a movie:

http://www.nasa.gov/mov/133778main_FUV_640x480.mov