Latest Solar flare Stories
NASA As magnetic fields on the sun rearrange and realign, dark spots known as sunspots can appear on its surface. Over the course of Feb. 19-20, 2013, scientists watched a giant sunspot form in under 48 hours. It has grown to over six Earth diameters across but its full extent is hard to judge since the spot lies on a sphere not a flat disk. The spot quickly evolved into what's called a delta region, in which the lighter areas around the sunspot, the penumbra, exhibit magnetic fields...
NASA On Feb. 9, 2013 at 2:30 a.m. EST, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, associated with a long duration C2.4-class flare. Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and ESA/NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, show that the CME left the sun at speeds of around 500 miles per second, which is a fairly typical speed for CMEs. Historically, CMEs at this speed are usually benign....
NASA [ Watch The Video ] In the evening of Feb. 5, 2013, the sun erupted with two coronal mass ejections or CMEs that may glance near-Earth space. Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and ESA/NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, show that the first CME began at 7 p.m. EST and left the sun at speeds of around 750 miles per second. The second CME began at 10:36 p.m. EST and left the sun at speeds of...
NASA [ Watch The Video ] On Jan. 31, 2013 at 2:09am EST, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME. Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and ESA/NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, show that the CME left the sun at speeds of around 575 miles per second, which is a fairly typical speed for CMEs. Historically, CMEs at this speed are mild. Not to be confused with a solar...
In the news release, Public Invited to Free Lecture at NASA Goddard: Our Eruptive Sun, issued 30-Jan-2013 by NASA over PR Newswire, we are advised by the organization that the hyperlinks in the sixth and ninth paragraphs for online registration have been updated. The complete release with corrected links is below: Public Invited to Free Lecture at NASA Goddard: Our Eruptive Sun GREENBELT, Md., Jan. 30, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The public is invited to a free event on...
GREENBELT, Md., Jan. 30, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The public is invited to a free event on Feb. 13 to experience "Our Eruptive Sun: The Causes and Consequences of Space Weather," by Dr. Phillip Chamberlin, Research Astrophysicist in the Solar Physics Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Md. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The sun was once thought to be a very stable source of energy to the Earth. In fact, scientists...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online When we take a glance at the sun, or sit down with paint to color the sky, we always see our home star as yellow, but the sun is full of much more diversity. The reason we only see yellow is because it is the brightest wavelength of light from the sun, but with special instruments, NASA is able to see all the wavelengths. With these instruments, whether they are in ground-based or space-based telescopes, we can observe light far...
WASHINGTON, Jan. 23, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A NASA suborbital telescope has given scientists the first clear evidence of energy transfer from the sun's magnetic field to the solar atmosphere or corona. This process, known as solar braiding, has been theorized by researchers, but remained unobserved until now. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Researchers were able to witness this phenomenon in the highest resolution images ever taken of the solar...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Scientists say they have solved a piece of the puzzle as to why the farther away you get from the surface of the Sun, the hotter you get. The visible surface, or photosphere, on the Sun is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, but as you move away from it, you pass through a layer of hot, ionized gas or plasma called the corona. Scientists have been puzzled for a while about how the solar atmosphere can get hotter, rather than colder, the farther...
NASA NASA's next Small Explorer (SMEX) mission to study the little-understood lower levels of the sun's atmosphere has been fully integrated and final testing is underway. Scheduled to launch in April 2013, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) will make use of high-resolution images, data and advanced computer models to unravel how matter, light, and energy move from the sun’s 6,000 K (10,240 F / 5,727 C) surface to its million K (1.8 million F / 999,700 C) outer...
Latest Solar flare Reference Libraries
Photosphere -- The photosphere of an astronomical object is the region at which the optical depth becomes one. In other words, the photosphere is the place where an object stops being transparent. It is typically used to describe the Sun or another star. Because stars are large balls of gas, they have no solid surface. However, there is a depth at which the gas stops being transparent to photons, and this depth provides a visual surface to the star. The Sun's photosphere has a...
Corona -- The corona is the luminous "atmosphere" of the Sun extending millions of kilometers into space, most easily seen during a total solar eclipse. An interesting feature of the corona is the fact that it is much hotter than the visible "surface" of the Sun; the photosphere is approximately 6000°C compared to the corona at over one million °C. The corona is much less dense than the photosphere, however, and so produces less light. The exact mechanism by which the corona is...
Chromosphere -- The chromosphere (literally, "color sphere") is a thin layer of the Sun's atmosphere just above the photosphere, roughly 10,000 kilometers deep. The chromosphere is more visually transparent than the photosphere. The most common solar feature within the chromosphere are spicules, long thin fingers of luminous gas which appear like the blades of a huge field of fiery grass growing upwards from the photosphere below. Spicules rise to the top of the chromosphere and then sink...
Solar Wind -- Solar wind, a stream of particles (mostly high-energy protons ~ 500 Kev) that is continually ejected from the surface of the Sun. The composition of this plasma is identical to the Sun's corona, 73% hydrogen and 25% helium with the remainder as trace impurities, and is ionized. Near Earth, the velocity of the solar wind varies from 200km/s-889km/s. The average is 450 km/s. Approximately 3000 tons of material is lost from the Sun every hour as solar wind. Since solar...
Solar Maximum -- The Sun, a roiling ball of plasma, occupies its place in space approximately 93 million miles from Earth. Though it seems simple to inhabitants of this planet -- the Sun shines, giving light and heat -- the processes occurring in the Sun are so complex that many scientists devote their careers to just one aspect of solar activity. Changes in the activity of the Sun particularly engage solar scientists. Whether fluctuations in the solar magnetic field, expulsions of...
