ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION)

STORY: Two massive solar flares -- ranked as X-class storms, the most powerful -- have erupted this week on the Sun, astronomers reported on Wednesday.

The first flare occurred on Sunday and the second on Tuesday . The resulting ejections of plasma, known as coronal mass ejections (CME), began reaching the Earth on Wednesday. Increased CME activity on Earth could interfere with orbiting transmission satellites and could cause outages on global positioning systems and other devices. Fluctuations to some electrical power grids may also be experienced.

The CME is traveling toward Earth at more than two million miles per hour.

The images of the flares were captured by the geosynchronous Solar Dynamics Observatory. The magnetic field telescope observed the most volatile activity in the region of the Sun known as Active Region 1429.

Astronomers anticipate that the solar flares may result in a more vivid apparition of the aurora borealis phenomena in the northern hemisphere.