A pair of powerful solar flares recently exploded "almost simultaneously" from two different sunspots located on opposite hemispheres of our star. The extremely rare phenomenon, known as a sympathetic solar flare, is another reminder that we are fast approaching the explosive peak in the sun's 11-year cycle, known as the solar maximum.
On Jan. 22, at around 10:30 p.m. ET, the two solar flares exploded at almost the exact same time from sunspots AR3559 and AR3561, which, at the time, were separated by around 310,000 miles (500,000 kilometers) — farther than the average distance between the moon and Earth, according to Spaceweather.com.
