Dolores Beasley

Headquarters, Washington, DC March 30, 2001

(Phone: 202/358-1753)

Bill Steigerwald

Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD

(Phone: 301/286-5017)

RELEASE: 01-59

A huge sunspot, thirteen-times larger than the surface area of the Earth and growing, has now rotated with the Sun to face our planet. The sunspot, which is the largest of the

current solar cycle, is also the largest to appear in a decade. The area of the Sun, designated AR 9393, has been a prolific generator of stormy solar activity, hurling clouds of

electrified gas towards Earth, producing four explosions, called flares, and spawning storms of high-speed particles in space. The largest of the four flares occurred at 4:57 a.m. EST on

Thursday, March 29, and was rated as an X-class flare, the most potent designation. The other three flares were rated M-class, second only to the X-class. An eruption near AR 9393

hurled a cloud of electrified, magnetic gas towards Earth on Wednesday. This eruption, called a Coronal Mass Ejection may cause auroral displays and magnetic storm activity when it

impacts the Earth's magnetic field sometime Friday. Another Earthbound CME associated with the X-class flare was seen at 5:26 a.m. EST March 29 and is expected to arrive on Saturday.

"Sunspots with complex magnetic field structures like those in AR 9393 can generate big flares, and sure enough, we just had a powerful X-class flare from this area," said Dr. Joseph

Gurman, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, project scientist for the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. SOHO is one of a fleet of

sun-observing spacecraft now tracking this region and its activity.  Sunspots are darker areas on the visible surface of the Sun caused by a concentration of distorted magnetic fields.

The strong magnetic field slows the flow of heat from the Sun's interior and keeps sunspots slightly cooler than their surroundings, causing them to appear dark. The number of

sunspots increases and decreases as the Sun's 11-year cycle of stormy activity rises and falls. Violent solar activity is believed to be caused by the release of magnetic energy, and

powerful solar eruptions and flares often occur near the enhanced magnetic field of sunspots. Solar flares, among the solar system's mightiest eruptions, are tremendous explosions in the

Sun's atmosphere, capable of releasing as much energy as a billion megatons of TNT. Caused by the sudden release of magnetic energy, in just a few seconds flares can accelerate solar

particles to very high velocities and heat solar material to tens of millions of degrees. Coronal mass ejections are clouds of electrified magnetic gas weighing billions of tons, hurled into

space at speeds of 12 to 1,250 miles per second. Depending on the orientation of the magnetic fields carried by the ejection cloud, solar explosions cause magnetic storms by interacting

with Earth's magnetic field, distorting its shape and accelerating electrically charged particles trapped within.  Severe solar weather is often heralded by dramatic auroral displays, but

magnetic storms are occasionally harmful, potentially affecting satellites, radio communications and power systems.Coronal Mass Ejections and flares can produce storms of

high-velocity particles. The ejections are believed to produce longer particle storms than flares, storms that sometimes last for days, as they plow through the slower solar wind at

supersonic speeds, creating a shock wave that accelerates electrically charged particles. The SOHO project is an international cooperative program between NASA and the European

Space Agency in the framework of the international Solar Terrestrial Science Program. Movies and images of this solar activity will be broadcast today on NASA Television, which is

broadcast on satellite GE-2, transponder 9C, C-band, located at 85 degrees West longitude. The frequency is 3880 MHz, with vertical polarization and monaural audio at 6.8 MHz.

For more information on the sunspot, refer to:

http://www.spaceweather.com/

-end-

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