M5-class Flare Is M5-class Mindblower

From EarthSky.

The sun produced an M5-class flare earlier today (May 22, 2013), which peaked at 1332 UTC (8:32 CDT). In the image below – from NASA SOHO, you can see the beautiful coronal mass ejection produced in the flare. The CME was not Earth-directed but could deliver a glancing blow in the next few days.

M5-class explosion from sunspot AR1745, which was about to disappear behind the sun’s western limb. The flare peaked at 1332 UTC (8:32 CDT) on May 22, 2013. The sun is behind the occulting disk at the center of the image, which is from from NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, space observatory.