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Space
Space
Science
Daisy Dobrijevic

Strongest solar storm since 2017 hits Earth but leaves aurora chasers in the dark

When sunspots erupt at nearly the same time, it could be something known ast "sympathetic solar flares." A double eruption from sunpots AR3616 and AR23614 on March 23, 2024 may be an example of it. One of the flares was an X1-class flare and was captured in multiple wavelengths by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. .

The sun erupted on March 22 at 9:45 p.m. EDT (0145 GMT on March 23) with a powerful X-class solar flare and unleashed a barrage of super-hot plasma towards Earth in what is known as a coronal mass ejection (CME). 

The energetic onslaught hit our planet at 10:37 a.m. EDT (1437 GMT) on Sunday, March 24, sparking a severe G4-class geomagnetic storm, the strongest solar storm since 2017.

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