Sunspot AR 3664 became as large as the Carrington event. The same one that melted down the telegraph 165 years ago.

• In just a few days, it launched powerful M and X class rockets. Including X8.7 intensity today.

• Richard Carrington’s drawing of a prominent sunspot in 1859 allows us to compare the two.

The sunspot in the region of Sun 3664 grew over the course of a year until it reached a width of more than 200,000 kilometers17 times the diameter of the Earth in recent days.

Officially a cluster, the complex structure merges with sunspots from neighboring region 3668 to form a dark figure that can be easily observed from Earth using a solar filter.

Like all the others, the spot appeared due to the influence of the Sun’s magnetic field when the star entered solar maximum. But AR 3664 is gigantic and has released many M and X class flares, the most intense, in recent days. Included one intensity X8.7 Today

The most powerful solar flare ever directed toward Earth was detected on May 11 at 1:39 UTC. The X5.8 explosion unleashed a massive solar storm on our planet, affecting farmers in mid-planting season and causing auroras in low latitudes such as the Canary Islands.

As big as the Carrington event sunspot.

Astronomers are already talking about a sunspot the size of the Carrington event, which caused auroras in unusually low latitudes such as the Caribbean and melted telegraph lines in 1859.

165 years ago there were no such solar observatories as there are today, especially in space. drawing by Richard Carrington a prominent spot allows us to compare them.

The flares and coronal mass ejections of the Carrington event were very strong and are often cited as an extreme example of what can happen when the Sun is very active.

Some astrophysicists are even warning of an Internet apocalypse in the event of a modern Carrington event, something not all astronomers believe and which apparently did not happen with the 2024 geomagnetic storms.

Despite this, it is important to monitor the activity of AR 3664 until it disappears from the surface of the Sun, since the Earth, as we have seen, may coincide with its trajectory.

Image | Correct_Presence_936 / Reddit

In Hatak | Auroras are being seen across Europe, including the south, during the biggest geomagnetic storm since 2005.