Large solar flare, 13 December 2006

The Sun unleashed a large (X-3 class) solar flare December 13, 2006 along with a coronal mass ejection (CME) that appears to be headed towards Earth. The source of these eruptions was the very active sunspot region 930. A shower of high-energy particles appeared as specks and white streaks on the imagers aboard SOHO, the primary watchdog for solar storms. The video clip from LASCO C2 coronagraph shows a CME emerging from behind the occulting disk and then almost immediately the imager is being struck by the particles (that travel at half the speed of light).