X1.5 Class Flare Earth Directed / Solar Watch March 10, 2011

March 9th ended with a powerful solar flare. Earth-orbiting satellites detected an explosion from behemoth sunspot 11166 around 2323 UTC. A movie from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows a bright flash of UV radiation plus some material being hurled away from the blast site After four years without any X-flares, the sun has produced two of the powerful blasts in less than one month: Feb. 15th and March 9th. This continues the recent trend of increasing solar activity, and shows that Solar Cycle 24 is heating up. NOAA forecasters estimate a 5% chance of more X-flares during the next 24 hours The X1.5 event event peaked at 23:16 UTC Wednesday evening and caused a strong R3 Level Radio Blackout on the sunlit side of earth significant 11166 sunspot discharges 2011/03/09 23:13:00 X1.5 Solar Soft website Helioviewer Quality Dedicated Solar Website Link Estimated Planetary K index information GOES Xray Flux Data sunspot information from solar monitor Cactus website