[SFDXA] Gigantic Sunspot Unleashes Flare; Expect Aurorae Tonight!

[WILLIAM MARX]

Gigantic Sunspot Unleashes Flare; Expect Aurorae Tonight! 
Right now, the Sun is sporting a huge sunspot called AR1944. It’s 
grown in size over the past few days to a staggering 200,000 kilometers 
(125,000 miles) across.
>sunspots are regions of intense magnetism, and these magnetic fields 
store huge energies. They can be unleashed in vast explosions called 
solar flares … and AR1944 popped off a good one on Jan. 7. The image 
above shows the Sun in ultraviolet by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory,
 taken on Jan. 7 at 18:33 UTC, just after the flare exploded. The bright
 white patch? Yeah, that’s it.
>It also triggered a coronal mass ejection, an eruption of subatomic 
particles, toward the Earth. There’s no need to panic; these happen 
relatively often. This one was pretty fast, with a speed of about 2,000 
kilometers per second—that’s 4.5 million miles per hour!
>It’s expected to hit the Earth’s magnetic field sometime today or tonight. The Space Weather Prediction Center says it may interact strongly with our geomagnetic field, producing aurorae. I’ve seen some folks predicting even mid-latitudes may see the lights, 
so I urge folks to go out after dark and look north. Unfortunately the 
Moon is half-full and so the sky will be a bit bright. It sets just 
after midnight local time, so if you go out later your chances of seeing the aurora might be better. It looks like we’ll have clear skies here 
in Boulder, Colo., so I’ll be taking a peek. Aurorae may still be 
visible Thursday night as well.