After a very active first quarter of 2022 which has seen an unprecedented three months for the potential to spot the northern lights across Wales, there doesn't appear to be any sign of such activity tapering off. 

On April 17, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), recorded the blast of an X1-class solar flare which had been generated by a large group of sunspots sighted on the sun's northeastern limb the day previously. 

Whilst the flare produced a pulse of x-rays that caused strong shortwave radio blackout across parts of the southern hemisphere, the Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), produced looks for the most part like generally missing the Earth on this occasion.

Solar flares are ranked by category, A-class the weakest, followed by 'B', 'C', and 'M' Class, the X-class the strongest. The flares are outbursts of light, sometimes related to CME's which discharged globules of charged particles into space.

However, as the sunspot group in question has been active for more than a week, it is slowly turning to face the Earth with the potential for further flare activity, with the sunspot group showing no signs of quietening down. 

Therefore, over the coming week and into the weekend, we can expect the possibility of sightings of the aurora borealis across Wales once again.

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