An unprecedented photo captures a strangely large solar explosion

TThe orbiting solar spacecraft had an interface-Show class this week It gives an unusually large burp, resulting in a unique image.

The Solar Orbiter noticed the solar prominence, or rite, on February 15, according to A European Void Agency Release. Solar prominences are clouds of solar gas lodged above the surface of the Sun’s magnetic field, often appearing as giant spiral structures that persist for days or even weeks. These events can lead to coronal mass ejections (CMEs), in which the expelled gas races through the solar system. If directed to the ground, it can do so Messing with our technology – like newly launched Satellites.

Fortunately, this parcel was not directed towards Earth. In fact, the opposite is true. The view from the Solar Orbiter, a joint mission between NASA and ESA, indicates that the fuse originated on the far side of the Sun from the spacecraft’s perspective.

This particular solar prominence was huge, and it could be seen reaching at least 2.2 1 million miles (3.5 million km), according to ESA. Indeed, the European Space Agency says it is “the largest event of its kind ever captured in a single field of view along with the solar disk,“ An achievement that opens “new possibilities for figuring out how such events relate to the solar disk.”

The burst was also detected by the BepiColombo radiation monitor, which picked up contemporary readings of electrons, protons and heavy ions. The ESA/JAXA spacecraft is currently near Mercury’s orbit. The Soho spacecraft caught the eruption as well, but from the first Lagrange point between Earth and the Sun. Unlike the Solar Orbiter, SOHO, a collaboration between the European Space Agency and NASA, uses a device called a Stealth Instrument to block out the sun’s glare, resulting in a large black dot in the center of the image.

Launched in February 2020, Solar Orbiter uses 10 instruments on board to capture unprecedented close-up views of the sun. The probe used its Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging (EUI) Full Solar Imager (FSI) to capture this unique perspective of the Sun and its newly launched filaments.

Solar Orbiter project scientist Daniel Muller said EUI/FSI observations showed that the outstanding material spans a distance equal to five times the radius of the Sun, and “can be traced much further in the Soho/Lasko paragraph data,” as he explained to me in an email . He added that before the volcano erupted, “the prominence could not be observed by the solar orbiter nor from nearby Earth because it was on the far side of the sun, so we don’t know what the length of the protrusion was before it erupted.”

As its name suggests, the Full Sun Imager can capture views of the entire solar disk, and will continue to do so even when the Solar Orbiter makes its next perihelion, or closest approach to the Sun, on March 26, when it’s about 0.3 times the distance between the Sun and Earth.

Scientists will keep a close eye on this solar prominence using the above tools as well NASA’s Parker Solar Probe. It’s great now We have so many eyes on the Sun that it is increasingly important for us to understand the processes behind these dramatic stellar events. In this way, we will be better able to predict the effects of these explosions when we direct them to us.

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