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The biggest solar X-ray flare ever is classified as X28 EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY NEWS RELEASE Posted: November 7, 2003 It has been announced that the massive solar X-ray flare which occurred on November 4 was, at best estimate, an X28. There is still a small chance this will be revised by a small amount, but it is now official: We have a new number 1 X-ray flare for the record books, the most powerful in recorded observational history. On Tuesday, this flare saturated the X-ray detectors on several monitoring satellites. The associated coronal mass ejection (CME) came out of the Sun's surface at about 2300 kilometres per second (8.2 million km/h). Only part of the CME is directed towards Earth, so we expect the Earth will receive only a glancing blow, since the source region is pointing away from us on the right on the limb of the Sun as seen from Earth.
Scientists classify solar flares according to their brightness in the x-ray wavelengths. There are three categories:
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