Space Events

Powerful Solar Flares

As Earth's magnetic field reverberates from one CME strike which hit on the 18th and sparked a G1-class geomagnetic storm, a second more potent CME is on the way. It was propelled in our direction by sunspot AR1748, which unleashed an M3-class solar flare on May 17th (0858 UT).

Although this is not the strongest flare we've seen from AR1748, it could be the most geoeffective; the sunspot was almost squarely facing Earth when the blast occurred. NOAA forecasters estimate a 75% chance of polar geomagnetic storms when the cloud arrives.

NASA Announces Brightest Lunar Explosion Ever Recorded

A boulder-sized meteor slammed into the moon in March, igniting an explosion so bright that anyone looking up at the right moment might have spotted it, NASA announced Friday.

NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office is reporting the discovery of the brightest impact seen on the moon in the eight year history of the monitoring program.

Some 300 lunar impact events have been logged over the years but this latest impact, from March 17, is considered many orders of magnitude brighter than anything else observed.

The blast lasted only about a single second and shone like a 4th magnitude star—making it bright enough to see with just the unaided eye.