An active sunspot that is just about to exit the visible disk of the sun shot a flare at Earth, causing a radio outage in Africa and the Middle East.
The M8 solar flare left the sun at 5:49 a.m. The sun-facing parts of the world were disrupted on Friday. The amateur radio operators in Africa and the Middle East could have experienced signal distortion for up to one hour after the flare.
There is a chance of more flares today before the sunspot disappears behind the sun's limb. A burst of charged plasma from the sun's upper atmosphere is thought to have accompanied the flare. The Met Office said in a statement that there could be a storm later in the weekend.
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The Met Office said that there was a flare on Thursday that was milder than the one on Wednesday. The good news is that the spectacular polar lights may become stronger and visible farther away from their usual polar areas.
The sunspot is expected to take its final bow later in the weekend and things are expected to get quieter. According to the Met Office, there are three other sunspots visible on the sun's face. Space weather forecasters don't detect any suspicious activity that could signal an approach of other active sunspots behind the sun's eastern limb.
There is a hole in the sun's corona, an opening in the magnetic field lines, which can cause solar wind to blow at a higher rate than usual. The electrical and radio communications technologies on Earth should not experience any disruptions because the solar wind and CMEs are not expected to cause a major storm.
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