The Sun is in no mood to leave the inner planet alone after striking the European orbiter close to Venus earlier this week.
As activity on the star picks up speed at a new level, Venus was struck by a large eruption on the other side of the Sun for the second time in a week.
Despite being aimed away from Earth, the large eruption from the far side was precisely in the path of Venus, which was subjected to intense radiation bombardment, as seen by NASA’s STEREO-A probe.
Spaceweather.com reports that it was a full halo coronal mass ejection that emerged from the far side of the Sun in the late hours of September 5.
One of the largest eruptions from the Sun’s surface, a coronal mass ejection can go into space at speeds of up to several million miles per hour with a billion tonnes of material inside.
The radiation and particles have a tendency to alter the atmosphere in space and are occasionally fatal to electronics and satellites, killing them quickly.
A NASA-developed model of the ejection showed it travelling away from Earth and directly toward Venus, unleashing a powerful solar storm on the planet’s enigmatic twin.
On September 1, another CME that originated from the same sunspot on the solar surface struck the planet.
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