Hotting up: Sun wakes up from sleep for busiest sunspot cycle in years and threatens to disrupt Earth communications and power

• Geomagnetic storm activity expected from around 6pm and could last 24 hours

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  Possible disruption to power grids and satellites

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• Flights over polar regions face being rerouted
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• This astonishing sequence of images shows a dramatic 'flare' bursting out from the sun which could affect satellite communications and power supplies here on Earth.

The spectacular development unleashed a radiation firestorm on a level not seen for five years which is expected to cause a 'moderate' geomagnetic storm when it reaches Earth. Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the event which combines a flare, a coronal mass ejection (CME) and a minor radiation storm.

'Part of our job here is to monitor and determine whether it is Earth-directed because essentially that material that is blasting out is gas with magnetic field combined,' he told AFP.

'In a day or so from now, we are expecting some of that material to impact us here on Earth and create a geomagnetic storm,' he said.

'We don't expect it to be any kind of a real severe one but it could be kind of a moderate level storm.'

The Space Weather Prediction Centre said the event is 'expected to cause G1 (minor) to G2 (moderate) levels of geomagnetic storm activity today, beginning around 1800 GMT'.

Any geomagnetic storm activity will likely be over within 12-24 hours.

'The Solar Radiation Storm includes a significant contribution of high energy protons, the first such occurrence of an event of that type since December 2006,' the NWS said.

As many as 12 satellites and spacecraft are monitoring the heliosphere, and one instrument in particular on board Nasa's lunar reconnaissance orbiter is measuring radiation and its effects.

'Certainly over the (two-year) lifetime of the mission this is the most significant event,' said Harlan Spence, principal investigator for the cosmic ray telescope for the effects of radiation, or CRaTER.

'This is really exciting because ironically when we were developing the mission initially we thought we would be launching closer to a solar maximum when these big solar particle events typically occur,' Spence told AFP.

'Instead we launched into a historic solar minimum that took a long, long time to wake up,' he said.

'This is interesting and significant because it shows the sun is returning to its more typical active state.'

The resulting geomagnetic storm could cause some disruption in power grids, satellites that operate global positioning systems and other devices, and may lead to some rerouting of flights over the polar regions, Murtagh said.

'Generally it is not going to cause any big problems, it will just have to be managed,' he said.

'If you fly from the United States to Asia, flying over the North Pole, there are well over a dozen flights every day,' he added.

'During these big radiation storms some of these airlines will reroute the flights away from the polar regions for safety reasons to make sure they can maintain communications.

'People operating satellites would keep an eye on this, too, because geomagnetic storming can interfere with satellites in various ways whether it is the satellite itself or the signal coming down from the receiver.'

The aurora borealis (Northern Lights) and aurora australis (Southern Lights) will also probably be visible in the late hours of today and tomorrow, Nasa said.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2000596/Solar-flare-Sunspot-cycle-threatens-disrupt-Earth-communications-power.html#ixzz1OgLAcIbG