November 4th X-FLARE was X 45?. Story + Link

[Marjorie Soto]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s ... 0316013018

Science - AFP

New Zealand study revises upwards size of "whopping" solar flare
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WELLINGTON, (AFP) - A solar flare which hit Earth last November was much larger than estimated at the time, a new study here has revealed.


AFP/File/Nasa Photo






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On November 4, the largest solar flare ever recorded exploded from the Sun's surface, sending an intense burst of radiation streaming towards Earth.


The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Space Environment Centre had estimated the flare's X-ray wavelengths as rating X28, the most powerful ever recorded.


But physicists at Otago University in Dunedin, south of here, used radio wave-based measurements of the X-rays' effects on Earth's upper atmosphere to dramatically revise upwards the size of the flare to "a whopping X45".


The findings of Associate Professor Neil Thomson, Craig Rodger and Richard Dowden will be published Tuesday in the American Geophysical Union's Geophysical Research Letters.


"This makes it more than twice as large as any previously recorded flare," Thomson said in a statement.


"If the accompanying particle and magnetic storm had been aimed at the Earth, the damage to some satellites and electrical networks could have been considerable."






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