The sun is becoming more and more active in its regular 11-year cycle and has a massive sunspot that serves as a hotbed for flares and other activity. A medium-sized solar flare briefly blocked shortwave radio on Tuesday, February 7th.

According to SpaceWeather.com, the active sun has caused several solar flares in recent days, one of which caused a shortwave communications blackout over the Pacific Ocean at 18:07 ET (23:07 pm GMT).

Its origin is AR3213, a giant Earth-facing sunspot that now extends 62,000 miles (100,000 km) from the Sun’s surface. Magnetic entanglement in the sunspot caused the lines to “break”, ejecting charged solar particles toward our planet in a mid-range flare (M6).

The sun is climbing to the apex of its 11-year cycle, which should reach by 2025. There’s ample evidence that the sun triggers flares in photos and videos from sun-observing satellites like NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Most solar activity is harmless and causes only short interruptions in the shortwave range, but the sun can produce more powerful bursts of energy that can disable satellites or other infrastructure. That’s why NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are working with organizations around the world to monitor our solar neighbor around the clock with telescopes, satellites and other observations of different wavelengths.

Emerging science is also trying to better understand how solar activity occurs. For example, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and ESA’s Solar Orbiter fly close to the Sun to sample the solar wind of particles passing through the Solar System and closely study the Sun’s solar structures and atmosphere.