On November 8th and 9th an especially powerful solar flare and CME sprayed SOHO's CCD camera with a cloud of high - energy particles, creating snowy pictures. (scientificamerican.com)
The sun's 11 - year activity cycle is currently approaching solar minimum, and during this time powerful solar flares become scarce and coronal holes become the primary space weather phenomena — this one in particular initiated aurora throughout the polar regions. (sciencedaily.com)
Satellites have detected powerful solar flares in the last two months, but this phenomenon has been recorded for over a century. (sciencedaily.com)