BOOM! Solar Minimum Flare releases energy of a billion WWII atomic bombs as C5-class solar flare is biggest since Oct 2017

Credit: SDO/HMI
We are into Solar Minimum but our Sun is still producing solar flares...
Yesterday, Jan. 26th at 13:22 UT, the magnetic canopy of sunspot AR2733 exploded, producing the strongest solar flare since the M1.1 way back in October 2017.
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded this extreme ultraviolet movie of the explosion: This is a C5-class solar flare. In a matter of minutes, it released about as much energy as a billion WWII atomic bombs.
According to Spaceweather.com, that sounds intense, but... On the sun such explosions are considered to be relatively minor.
X-class flares common during Solar Maximum are hundreds of times stronger.
Right now, however, the sun is in the pits of a deep Solar Minimum, which makes a C5-class flare temporarily noteworthy.
The explosion did not hurl a CME toward Earth.

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Spaceweather

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