A Look Back: When The Sun Unleashed Six X-class Flares in November | NASA SDO

A Look Back: When The Sun Unleashed Six X-class Flares in November | NASA SDO

A blended composite image highlighting all six X-class flares from November 2025. The main image shows 131 Angstrom light, a subset of extreme ultraviolet light. The inset images show a variety of 131 and blends of 131, 171, and 304 Angstrom light. 

A blended composite image highlighting all six X-class flares from November 2025. The image shows 131 Angstrom light, a subset of extreme ultraviolet light.

A blended composite image of all six X-class flares from November 2025. The image shows 131 Angstrom light, a subset of extreme ultraviolet light.

A year ago, the largest solar radiation storm in twenty years struck planet Earth. Literally hit. Particles from an X5-class solar flare on Nov. 11, 2025, penetrated our atmosphere and struck the ground. During November 2025, there were six X-class solar flares. The strongest geomagnetic storm that year. All but one of these flares—the X1.1 flare on Nov. 4, erupted from the same active region on the Sun: AR14274. These composite images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, helps us visualize how AR14274 moved across the Sun during that time. This composite image was created by overlaying SDO’s images from each flare onto each other.

Solar flares, intense flashes of light, do not themselves cause geomagnetic storms—but they are often associated with coronal mass ejections, giant eruptions of solar particles, that do. The three back-to-back flares erupted on Nov. 9, 10, and 11, 2025, were accompanied by coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that triggered the intense geomagnetic storm of Nov. 11-13. This led to aurora sightings as far south as Florida in the United States.

To see how such space weather may affect Earth, please visit NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center https://spaceweather.gov/, the U.S. government’s official source for space weather forecasts, watches, warnings, and alerts.

NASA works as a research arm of the nation’s space weather effort. NASA observes the Sun and our space environment constantly with a fleet of spacecraft that study everything from the Sun’s activity to the solar atmosphere, and to the particles and magnetic fields in the space surrounding Earth.

Learn more about space weather: http://go.nasa.gov/4bLKwte

Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO/Scott Wiessinger
Release Date: Nov. 19, 2025

#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Science #SpaceWeather #Sun #Stars #Sun #SolarCycle25 #SolarFlares #CMEs #SolarStorms #SolarStorms2025 #Sunspots #ActiveSolarRegions #AR14274 #MagneticFields #SolarRadiation #Earth #Astrophysics #Heliophysics #SDO #NASAGoddard #GSFC #NOAA #UnitedStates #STEM #Education