If you look closely, a series of flares seen on the sun outline a figure, NASA says
At 6:20 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 1, the sun emitted a burst of energy that counted as a very powerful solar flare, but that’s not what scientists are talking about.
Apparently, it happened at just the right moment to transform the sun into one huge face, and it looks an awful lot like a jack-o’-lantern.
Scientists at NASA were the first to notice, and they couldn’t help but get out a marker and connect the dots to prove it. The result looks like a kindergartner’s art project, but it gets the point across.
“Did you catch the X7.1-class flare yesterday!” NASA Sun Science wrote in an Oct. 2 Facebook post.
“We just have one question: Is it a zit or a dimple?”
Their question refers to the placement of the solar flare, which happened just to left of the sun’s crooked grin.
The Oct. 2 post had gotten hundreds of reactions and comments within hours, with many people suggesting it was a solar beauty mark.
“Oh, snap. Getting ready for Halloween,” one commenter wrote.
Jokes aside, the flare was classified as a X7.1, which puts it in the most powerful class of radiation bursts emitted by the sun.
As a result, geomagnetic storm watches have been issued for Earth from Oct. 3 through 5 due to the expected arrival of coronal mass ejection, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says.
That means some technology will impacted and “the aurora may become visible over many northern states and some of the Midwest to Oregon,” NOAA predicts.
This story was originally published October 2, 2024 at 3:14 PM