A BURST OF STATIC FROM THE SUN: The explosion that hurled a CME toward Earth on April 21st also illuminated our planet with an intense burst of shortwave radio static. Amateur astronomer Thomas Ashcraft of New Mexico recorded the outburst: 

“Few solar radio bursts show as hot purple on my spectrograph, but this one ‘rang the bell’,” he says. “Here is an audio recording in stereo with 22 MHz in one channel and 19 MHz in the other.”

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