Mark Megahan
The Solar Orbiter was in perfect position to catch a “striking and unprecedented image of a solar eruption,” recently. It’s a real good thing that the orbiter was off to one side. The Earth was thankfully out of range as well.
Massive solar eruption
The solar orbiter is a joint project of NASA and the European Space Agency. On February 15 the probe imaged “the largest solar prominence ever observed in a single image together with the full disc of the sun.”
The video of the eruption is amazing. It shows the flare blasting millions of miles into space.
Project managers explain that the high definition image was taken by the Full Sun Imager of the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager onboard the Solar Orbiter. Each little module has it’s own role to play.
The Full Sun Imager is designed to capture the full solar disc even during close passages of the sun. That’s not an easy task to accomplish. It was perfectly positioned to make the best of this major eruption event.
Right now, an ESA spokesperson relates, “there is still a lot of ‘viewing margin’ around the disc, enabling stunning detail to be captured by FSI out to about 3.5 million kilometers, equivalent to five times the radius of the Sun.”
The craft will get to “closest approach on 26 March, which will see the spacecraft pass within about 0.3 times the Sun-Earth distance,” When it does, the Sun “will fill a much larger portion of the telescope’s field of view.” It will also be a lot more vulnerable to an eruption like the one just visualized.
Dense plasma concentrations
Flare eruption events flow out along “large structures of tangled magnetic field lines that keep dense concentrations of solar plasma suspended above the Sun’s surface, sometimes taking the form of arching loops.” These solar prominences “are often associated with coronal mass ejections, a hugely energetic explosion of light, solar material and energy from the Sun.” Those are something to watch out for.
“If these ejections are directed toward Earth, they can disrupt technology reliant on satellites.” They can be pretty, too. “The ejections also cause the northern lights.”
According to ESA, this imagery will “allow space experts to understand for the first time how events like these connect to the solar disc.” Eruption incidents are expected to become more frequent as the sun gets more energetic.
“It started a new 11-year cycle in 2019.” That means solar maximum, when activity peaks, will happen halfway through 2025.
Another milestone event will happen next week. Besides studying eruption and flare activity, “the Solar Orbiter and NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will conduct joint observations as Parker makes its next close pass by the sun.”
Parker made history last year by becoming the very first spacecraft to “touch the sun” as it skimmed through the outer layers of the corona “sample particles and our star’s magnetic fields.“
