Managed to catch a just-shy-of-X1-class flare a few hours ago when I put my scope out on the deck.
The complex chaos of magnetic fields — that is much, much larger than the size of Earth — designated as Region 3664 and Region 3668 (center right sunspot smudge) has been spawning a great number of flares recently, flinging an truly stupendous amount of energy and relativistic particles out into the solar system.
