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The "superflare" came from one of the stars in a close binary system known as DG Canum Venaticorum, or DG CVn for short, located about 60 light-years away. Both stars are dim red dwarfs with masses and sizes about one-third of our sun's. They orbit each other at about three times Earth's average distance from the sun, which is too close for Swift to determine which star erupted.
On April 23, NASA's Swift satellite detected the strongest, hottest, and longest-lasting sequence of stellar flares ever seen from a nearby red dwarf star. The initial blast from this record-setting series of explosions was as much as 10,000 times more powerful than the largest solar flare ever recorded.
"We used to think major flaring episodes from red dwarfs lasted no more than a day, but Swift detected at least seven powerful eruptions over a period of about two weeks," said Stephen Drake, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who gave a presentation on the "superflare" at the August meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s High Energy Astrophysics Division. "This was a very complex event."
At its peak, the flare reached temperatures of 360 million degrees Fahrenheit (200 million Celsius), more than 12 times hotter than the center of the sun.
The largest solar explosions are classified as extraordinary, or X class, solar flares based on their X-ray emission. "The biggest flare we've ever seen from the sun occurred in November 2003 and is rated as X 45," explained Drake. "The flare on DG CVn, if viewed from a planet the same distance as Earth is from the sun, would have been roughly 10,000 times greater than this, with a rating of about X 100,000."
the flare reached temperatures of 360 million degrees Fahrenheit
You are confusing a solar flare with a CME.
Also not exactly related but her is a CG rendering of the earth's magnetic field and plasma destiny of a Carrington class CME,
originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: BGTM90
You are confusing a solar flare with a CME.
Also not exactly related but her is a CG rendering of the earth's magnetic field and plasma destiny of a Carrington class CME,
A flare is a burst of electromagnetic radiation(x-rays, uv, visible light, radio). A CME is a burst of matter(plasma). Though they are often (not always) associated with each other each has very different effects. Apparently there is no way of knowing if there were any CMEs associated with these events. All that was detected were the flashes.
In any case, a flare of such intensity from the Sun could be, um, problematic for life on Earth.