XRT Picture of the Week (XPOW)

XRT Home XRT Mission Ops YouTube



2025 December 16

X5Flare

XRT observed a very powerful X5.1 flare! Click on the image to see the flare in action or click here for the youtube version

An X5.1 candle flame from AR14274

A candle was lit and the flame grew up beautifully at the Northwest quadrant of the Sun: Actually it was the post flare loops developed after the X5.1 flare occurred at 9:49 UT on 2025/11/11 from the active region, AR14274.

Although we have a half month left until the year-end of 2025, this flare is probably the largest flare observed in this year. And this is so far the 6th largest flare we had since the start of the current solar cycle No.25.

FYI, below is the top 10 list of the solar cycle 25 flares as of this writing (*):
  • 2024/10/03 12:08 X9.0 NOAA 13842
  • 2024/05/14 16:46 X8.7 NOAA 13664
  • 2024/10/01 21:58 X7.1 NOAA 13842
  • 2024/02/22 22:08 X6.3 NOAA 13590
  • 2024/05/11 01:10 X5.8 NOAA 13664
  • 2025/11/11 09:49 X5.1 NOAA 14274 <-------
  • 2023/12/31 21:36 X5.0 NOAA 13536
  • 2024/05/06 05:38 X4.5 NOAA 13663
  • 2024/09/14 15:13 X4.5 NOAA 13825
  • 2025/11/14 07:44 X4.0 NOAA 14274
AR 14274 was a powerful region that produced 5 X class and 14 M class flares over the period of its disk transit from early-to-mid November. Since the X5.1 event on 11/11 was the largest of them and besides being accompanied by a gorgeous candle flame, it was obviously the culmination of AR14274's life spent on our visible side of the Sun.

(*): collected by making use of a SolarSoft procedure, pr_gev.pro

Keywords: AR Tracking, Flare
Filters: Thin_Be


(Prepared by Aki Takeda)

The XRT instrument team is comprised of SAO, NASA, JAXA, and NAOJ.

Back Archive Next