#SolarFlares, #Spaceweather via Spaceweather.com And there's a reason I held onto my eclipse glasses. Read on...

"THIS SUNSPOT IS HUGE: Sunspot #AR3664 has grown so large, it is now visually rivaling the great #Carrington sunspot of Sept. 1859. To illustrate their similarity, Carrington's famous sketch (to scale) has been added to a picture of today's sun:

"How big is AR3664? Sprawling almost 200,000 km from end to end, it is 15 times wider than Earth. You can see AR3664 through ordinary eclipse glasses with no magnification at all. Moreover, it is easy to project an image of this sunspot onto the sidewalk or a white screen just as Carrington did in the 19th century.

"Carrington's sunspot is famous because in August and Sept. 1859 it emitted a series of intense #SolarFlares and #CMEs. The resulting #geomagnetic storms set fire to telegraph offices and sparked auroras from Cuba to Hawaii. The '#CarringtonEvent' has since become a touchstone of space weather in pop culture, with headlines stoking fears of an "internet apocalypse" if it repeats. Recent studies suggest that Carrington-class storms occur once every 40 to 60 years, so we're overdue.

"Does this mean we're about to get hit by another Carrington Event? Probably not. Big sunspots don't always produce big CMEs. Indeed, the CME AR3664 hurled toward us earlier today is puny compared to the CMEs of 1859. It won't cause much trouble when it arrives this weekend. Nevertheless, it would be wise to keep an eye on this growing active region while Earth is in its strike zone."

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