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After months of preparation and years since its last flight, the upgraded High Resolution Coronal Imager Flare mission – Hi-C Rocket Flare, for short – took to the skies for a never-before-seen view of a solar flare.
E-Mail IMAGE: Artistic visualization of the Sun's magnetic field in the active region observed by CLASP2 view more Credit: Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC). Every day space telescopes provide spectacular images of the solar activity. However, their instruments are blind to its main driver: the magnetic field in the outer layers of the solar atmosphere, where the explosive events that occasionally affect the Earth occur. The extraordinary observations of the polarization of the Sun's ultraviolet light achieved by the CLASP2 mission have made it possible to map the magnetic field throu...
Scientists have captured the full lifecycle of a putative nanoflare This may be the first complete observation of a Nanoflare. A close-up of one of the loop brightenings studied in the article. Each inset frame zooms in to the selected region in the frame to its left. The frame on the far right is the most zoomed in, showing the putative nanoflare. Credits: NASA/SDO/IRIS/Shah Bahauddin A billion times less energetic than ordinary flares, nanoflares have a power that belies their name. A typical ‘nanoflare’ has the same energy as 240 megatons of TNT. Nanoflares, tiny eruptions on the Sun- ...
A new study published in Nature Astronomy [1] marks the first time researchers have captured the full lifecycle of a putative nanoflare – from bright origins to blistering demise. Nanoflares are tiny eruptions on the Sun, one-billionth the size of normal solar flares. Eugene Parker – of Parker Solar Probe fame [2] – first predicted them in 1972 to solve a major puzzle: the coronal heating problem. A close-up of one of the loop brightenings studied in the article. Each inset frame zooms in to the selected region in the frame to its left. The frame on the far right is the most zoomed in, ...
Using pictures from the Earth-orbiting Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) and the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), scientists at Rice University, the University of Colorado Boulder, and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center have uncovered clues showing that low-lying magnetic loops are heated to millions of degrees Kelvin. Researchers on the study put forth the case that heavier ions like silicon are given preferential treatment and get roasted in both the solar wind and the threshold region between the sun's chromosphere and corona. Within these zones, dense loops of magnetized pl...