Solar Minimum versus Solar Maximum | NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory FriendsofNASA.org: Our Sun is a 4.5 billion-year-old yellow dwarf star—a hot glowing ball of hydrogen and helium—at the center of our solar system. It is about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from Earth and our solar system’s only star. The height of the Sun’s activity cycle, known as solar maximum, is a time of greatly increased solar storm activity. Sunspots, eruptions called solar flares, and coronal mass ejectio

What. A. Day! The third strongest solar flare of the solar cycle occurred a few hours ago! Unfortunately there wasn’t much of a CME and nothing major is forecasted to hit Earth (if at all). The region responsible for this activity, AR 4366, remains active and may produce another large flare soon! The sunspot group is moving to a more earth-directed position in the next few days. While the CME today was not directed towards Earth, future flares may launch CME that have a stronger Earth-directed c