This story was updated at 5 p.m. ET. The sun unleashed a huge
flare Thursday (July 12), the second major solar storm to erupt
from our star in less than a week. The solar flare peaked at
12:52 p.m. EDT (1652 GMT) as an X-class sun storm, the most
powerful type of flare the suncan have. "It erupted from Active
Region 1520, which rotated into view on July 6," NASA officials
said in an alert. Active Region 1520, or AR1520, is a giant
sunspot currently facing Earth. According to NASA and the Space
Weather Prediction Center (SPWC), which is operated by the U.S.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, today's sun
storm registered as an X1.4-class solar flare. It is more
powerful than the X1.1 flare that erupted on July 6 from another
giant sunspot known as AR1515, making this latest tempest the
strongest solar storm of the summer so far. The sunspot region
AR1520 could be up to 186,411 miles (300,000 kilometers) long at
its peak, solar astrophysicist C. Alex Young of NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center told