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Space
Space
Science
Meredith Garofalo

Here we go again — new sunspot regions emerge, strong solar flare recorded

A false color image of the sun, shown in blue greens, as flares a swirls erupt from its surface.

All eyes have now shifted to the eastern limb of the sun, as a strong X2.9-class flare fired off from newly numbered sunspot region AR3685 on Wednesday (May 15).

Solar flares are intense bursts of electromagnetic radiation that originate from sunspots on our sun's surface. They are classified into lettered groups according to their size, with X-class flares being the most powerful. Within each of these classes, numbers from 1 to10 (and beyond for X-class flares) denote a flare's relative strength.

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