The Sun, a G-type main sequence star lies at the heart of our Solar System and formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a giant molecular cloud. With a diameter of 1.39 million kilometres it accounts for 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. Deep in it’s core where nuclear fusion converts hydrogen to helium, temperatures reach a staggering 15 million degrees Celsius. The fusion process, which consumes around 600 million tons of hydrogen every second, powers all life on Earth.
Observations of the Sun clearly reveal its violent nature. Solar flares can often be seen erupting into space and, these massive explosions release bursts of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum. Flares occur when magnetic energy builds up in the solar atmosphere and is suddenly released, accelerating charged particles to nearly the speed of light. A large solar flare can release energy equivalent to millions of hydrogen bombs exploding simultaneously, heating solar material to tens of millions of degrees and causing it to shine brightly in X-rays and extreme ultraviolet light.
An X3.2-class solar flare observed in different wavelengths. Clockwise from top left: 304, 335, 131, and 193 Å (Credit : NASA/SDO)
The powerful radiation emitted by solar flares impacts Earth’s ionosphere and can severely disrupt radio transmissions across various frequencies. This highlights the critical importance of the ongoing surveillance and research programs dedicated to these solar phenomena. Flares are categorised from the smallest classed as B-Class flares to the most intense as X-Class. Just below this highest category are the medium intensity events known as M-Class and it was an event like this that has just been observed in a stunning video.
The video (which can be viewed here on the ESA website) revealed the M-Class flare in stunning detail from data captured by the Solar Orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument. It gives the highest resolution observations of solar flares as they evolve in both space and time. The movie was created by scientists at the Royal Observatory of Belgium using the publicly available JHelioviewer software—a tool that allows anyone to create similar solar flare visualisations. The footage condenses a 15-minute flare event into a brief time-lapse.
This remarkable footage is part of the EUI dataset that’s fully accessible through the JHelioviewer application to anyone that would like to have process the data. It can be found on the JHelioviewer website. It was developed by the ESA/NASA Helioviewer Project that enables anyone to explore solar data from a number of missions. The application can be used by anyone to browse solar imagery across different wavelengths and create wonderful time-lapse animations of solar activity.
The application is easy enough to download and has formats for most popular operating systems. The interface is easy enough to use with a clear way to select datasets with particular solar events categorised. It’s easy to lose a good few hours on this, I know, I tried and its fascinating to lose yourself in amazing imagery of our local star.
Source : Solar Orbiter spots a solar flare
