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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:00:40 Back in 2023, we reported on Solar Orbiter’s discovery of tiny jets near the Sun’s south pole that could be powering the solar wind. The team behind this research has now used even more data from the European Space Agency’s prolific solar mission to confirm that these jets exist all over dark patches in the Sun’s atmosphere, and that they really are a source of not only fast but also slow solar wind.
The newfound jets can be seen in this sped-up video as hair-like wisps that flash very briefly, for example within the circled regions of the Sun's surface. In reality they last around one minute and fling out charged particles at about 100 km/s.
The surprising result is published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics, highlighting how Solar Orbiter’s unique combination of instruments can unveil the mysteries of the star at the centre of our Solar System.
The solar wind is the never-ending rain of electrically charged particles given out by the Sun. It pervades the Solar System and its effects can be felt on Earth. Yet despite decades of study, its origin remained poorly understood. Until now.
The solar wind comes in two main forms: fast and slow. We have known for decades that the fast solar wind comes from the direction of dark patches in the Sun’s atmosphere called coronal holes – regions where the Sun’s magnetic field does not turn back down into the Sun but rather stretches deep into the Solar System.
Charged particles can flow along these ‘open’ magnetic field lines, heading away from the Sun, and creating the solar wind. But a big question remained: how do these particles get launched from the Sun in the first place?
Building upon their previous discovery, the research team (led by Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany) used Solar Orbiter’s onboard ‘cameras’ to spot more tiny jets within coronal holes close to the Sun’s equator.
By combining these high-resolution images with direct measurements of solar wind particles and the Sun’s magnetic field around Solar Orbiter, the researchers could directly connect the solar wind measured at the spacecraft back to those exact same jets.
What’s more, the team was surprised to find not just fast solar wind coming from these jets, but also slow solar wind. This is the first time that we can say for sure that at least some of the slow solar wind also comes from tiny jets in coronal holes – until now, the origin of the solar wind had been elusive.
The fact that the same underlying process drives both fast and slow solar wind comes as a surprise. The discovery is only possible thanks to Solar Orbiter’s unique combination of advanced imaging systems, as well as its instruments that can directly detect particles and magnetic fields.
The measurements were taken when Solar Orbiter made close approaches to the Sun in October 2022 and April 2023. These close approaches happen roughly twice a year; during the next ones, the researchers hope to collect more data to better understand how these tiny jets ‘launch’ the solar wind.
Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA, operated by ESA. This research used data from Solar Orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), Solar Wind Plasma Analyser (SWA) and Magnetometer (MAG). Find out more about the instruments Solar Orbiter is using to reveal more about the Sun.
Read our news story from 2023 about how Solar Orbiter discovered tiny jets that could power the solar wind
Read more about how Solar Orbiter can trace the solar wind back to its source region on the Sun
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By NASA
3 min read
NASA Solar Observatory Sees Coronal Loops Flicker Before Big Flares
For decades, scientists have tried in vain to accurately predict solar flares — intense bursts of light on the Sun that can send a flurry of charged particles into the solar system. Now, using NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, one team has identified flickering loops in the solar atmosphere, or corona, that seem to signal when the Sun is about to unleash a large flare.
These warning signs could help NASA and other stakeholders protect astronauts as well as technology both in space and on the ground from hazardous space weather.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of coronal loops above an active region on the Sun in mid-January 2012. The image was taken in the 171 angstrom wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light. NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory Led by heliophysicist Emily Mason of Predictive Sciences Inc. in San Diego, California, the team studied arch-like structures called coronal loops along the edge of the Sun. Coronal loops rise from magnetically driven active regions on the Sun, where solar flares also originate.
The team looked at coronal loops near 50 strong solar flares, analyzing how their brightness in extreme ultraviolet light varied in the hours before a flare compared to loops above non-flaring regions. Like flashing warning lights, the loops above flaring regions varied much more than those above non-flaring regions.
“We found that some of the extreme ultraviolet light above active regions flickers erratically for a few hours before a solar flare,” Mason explained. “The results are really important for understanding flares and may improve our ability to predict dangerous space weather.”
Published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters in December 2024 and presented on Jan. 15, 2025, at a press conference during the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, the results also hint that the flickering reaches a peak earlier for stronger flares. However, the team says more observations are needed to confirm this link.
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The four panels in this movie show brightness changes in coronal loops in four different wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light (131, 171, 193, and 304 angstroms) before a solar flare in December 2011. The images were taken by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and processed to reveal flickering in the coronal loops. NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory/JHelioviewer/E. Mason Other researchers have tried to predict solar flares by examining magnetic fields on the Sun, or by looking for consistent trends in other coronal loop features. However, Mason and her colleagues believe that measuring the brightness variations in coronal loops could provide more precise warnings than those methods — signaling oncoming flares 2 to 6 hours ahead of time with 60 to 80 percent accuracy.
“A lot of the predictive schemes that have been developed are still predicting the likelihood of flares in a given time period and not necessarily exact timing,” said team member Seth Garland of the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
Each solar flare is like a snowflake — every single flare is unique.
Kara kniezewski
Air Force Institute of Technology
“The Sun’s corona is a dynamic environment, and each solar flare is like a snowflake — every single flare is unique,” said team member Kara Kniezewski, a graduate student at the Air Force Institute of Technology and lead author of the paper. “We find that searching for periods of ‘chaotic’ behavior in the coronal loop emission, rather than specific trends, provide a much more consistent metric and may also correlate with how strong a flare will be.”
The scientists hope their findings about coronal loops can eventually be used to help keep astronauts, spacecraft, electrical grids, and other assets safe from the harmful radiation that accompanies solar flares. For example, an automated system could look for brightness changes in coronal loops in real-time images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory and issue alerts.
“Previous work by other researchers reports some interesting prediction metrics,” said co-author Vadim Uritsky of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the Catholic University of Washington in D.C. “We could build on this and come up with a well-tested and, ideally, simpler indicator ready for the leap from research to operations.”
By Vanessa Thomas
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Jan 15, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
2 min read
Jovian Vortex Hunters Spun Up Over New Paper
Jumping Jupiter! The results are in, storm chasers! Thanks to your help over the last two years the Jovian Vortex Hunter project has published a catalog of 7222 vortices, which you can download here. Each vortex is an enormous swirling windstorm in Jupiter’s atmosphere–terrifying yet beautiful to behold.
The vortices are labeled by color (“white” is most common, then “dark”, then “red”).
The catalog reveals distributions of vortex sizes, aspect ratios, and locations on the planet. For example, your work showed that white and dark vortices are preferentially found near the poles. These distributions help researchers derive general parameters about Jupiter’s atmosphere that can give us insights about its internal processes and the atmospheres of other planets.
Over 5,000 of you helped build this catalog by performing over a million classifications of images of Jupiter from the JunoCam instrument on NASA’s Juno mission. The details of the catalog are now published in this paper in the Planetary Science Journal. You can also learn more about this amazing volunteer effort in a video you can find on the Jovian Vortex Hunter Results webpage.Thanks to your efforts, The Jovian Vortex Hunter project is out of data. But you can work with JunoCam data in a different way by participating in NASA’s JunoCam citizen science project.
A set of really cool vortices–spinning storms–found by Jovian Vortex Hunters. Data from the JunoCam instrument on NASA’s Juno mission.
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Last Updated Dec 17, 2024 Editor Bill Keeter Related Terms
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By NASA
7 Min Read NASA’s Webb Reveals Unusual Jets of Volatile Gas from Icy Centaur 29P
An artist’s concept of Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1’s outgassing activity as seen from the side. Credits:
NASA, ESA, CSA, L. Hustak (STScI) Inspired by the half-human, half-horse creatures that are part of Ancient Greek mythology, the field of astronomy has its own kind of centaurs: distant objects orbiting the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has mapped the gases spewing from one of these objects, suggesting a varied composition and providing new insights into the formation and evolution of the solar system.
Centaurs are former trans-Neptunian objects that have been moved inside Neptune’s orbit by subtle gravitational influences of the planets in the last few million years, and may eventually become short-period comets. They are “hybrid” in the sense that they are in a transitional stage of their orbital evolution: Many share characteristics with both trans-Neptunian objects (from the cold Kuiper Belt reservoir), and short-period comets, which are objects highly altered by repeated close passages around the Sun.
Image A: Illustration
An artist’s concept of Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1’s outgassing activity as seen from the side. While prior radio-wavelength observations showed a jet of gas pointed toward Earth, astronomers used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to gather additional insight on the front jet’s composition and noted three more jets of gas spewing from Centaur 29P’s surface. NASA, ESA, CSA, L. Hustak (STScI) Since these small icy bodies are in an orbital transitional phase, they have been the subject of various studies as scientists seek to understand their composition, the reasons behind their outgassing activity — the loss of their ices that lie underneath the surface — and how they serve as a link between primordial icy bodies in the outer solar system and evolved comets.
A team of scientists recently used Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument to obtain data on Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 (29P for short), an object that is known for its highly active and quasi-periodic outbursts. It varies in intensity every six to eight weeks, making it one of the most active objects in the outer solar system. They discovered a new jet of carbon monoxide (CO) and previously unseen jets of carbon dioxide (CO2) gas, which give new clues to the nature of the centaur’s nucleus.
“Centaurs can be considered as some of the leftovers of our planetary system’s formation. Because they are stored at very cold temperatures, they preserve information about volatiles in the early stages of the solar system,” said Sara Faggi of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and American University in Washington, DC, lead author of the study. “Webb really opened the door to a resolution and sensitivity that was impressive to us — when we saw the data for the first time, we were excited. We had never seen anything like this.”
Webb and the Jets
Centaurs’ distant orbits and consequent faintness have inhibited detailed observations in the past. Data from prior radio wavelength observations of Centaur 29P showed a jet pointed generally toward the Sun (and Earth) composed of CO. Webb detected this face-on jet and, thanks to its large mirror and infrared capabilities, also sensitively searched for many other chemicals, including water (H2O) and CO2. The latter is one of the main forms in which carbon is stored across the solar system. No indication of water vapor was detected in the atmosphere of 29P, which could be related to the extremely cold temperatures present in this body.
The telescope’s unique imaging and spectral data revealed never-before-seen features: two jets of CO2 emanating in the north and south directions, and another jet of CO pointing toward the north. This was the first definitive detection of CO2 in Centaur 29P.
Image B: IFU Graphic
A team of scientists used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s spectrographic capabilities to gather data on Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1, one of the most active objects in the outer solar system. The Webb data revealed never-before-seen features: two jets of carbon dioxide spewing in the north and south directions, and a jet of carbon monoxide pointing toward north. NASA, ESA, CSA, L. Hustak (STScI), S. Faggi (NASA-GSFC, American University) Based on the data gathered by Webb, the team created a 3D model of the jets to understand their orientation and origin. They found through their modeling efforts that the jets were emitted from different regions on the centaur’s nucleus, even though the nucleus itself cannot be resolved by Webb. The jets’ angles suggest the possibility that the nucleus may be an aggregate of distinct objects with different compositions; however, other scenarios can’t yet be excluded.
Video A: Zoom and Spin
An artist’s concept of Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1’s outgassing activity as seen from the side. While prior radio-wavelength observations showed a jet of gas pointed toward Earth, astronomers used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to gather additional insight on the front jet’s composition and noted three more jets of gas spewing from Centaur 29P’s surface.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, L. Hustak (STScI) “The fact that Centaur 29P has such dramatic differences in the abundance of CO and CO2 across its surface suggests that 29P may be made of several pieces,” said Geronimo Villanueva, co-author of the study at NASA Goddard. “Maybe two pieces coalesced together and made this centaur, which is a mixture between very different bodies that underwent separate formation pathways. It challenges our ideas about how primordial objects are created and stored in the Kuiper Belt.”
Persisting Unanswered Questions (For Now)
The reasons for Centaur 29P’s bursts in brightness, and the mechanisms behind its outgassing activity through the CO and CO2 jets, continue to be two major areas of interest that require further investigation.
In the case of comets, scientists know that their jets are often driven by the outgassing of water. However, because of the centaurs’ location, they are too cold for water ice to sublimate, meaning that the nature of their outgassing activity differs from comets.
“We only had time to look at this object once, like a snapshot in time,” said Adam McKay, a co-author of the study at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. “I’d like to go back and look at Centaur 29P over a much longer period of time. Do the jets always have that orientation? Is there perhaps another carbon monoxide jet that turns on at a different point in the rotation period? Looking at these jets over time would give us much better insights into what is driving these outbursts.”
The team is hopeful that as they increase their understanding of Centaur 29P, they can apply the same techniques to other centaurs. By improving the astronomical community’s collective knowledge of centaurs, we can simultaneously better our understanding on the formation and evolution of our solar system.
These findings have been published in Nature.
The observations were taken as part of General Observer program 2416.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
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Media Contacts
Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov, Rob Gutro – rob.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Abigail Major – amajor@stsci.edu, Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
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Last Updated Oct 02, 2024 Editor Marty McCoy Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
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By NASA
Learn Home NASA Earth Science Education… Earth Science Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Stories Science Activation Highlights Citizen Science 2 min read
NASA Earth Science Education Collaborative Member Co-Authors Award-Winning Paper in Insects
On August 13, 2024, the publishers of the journal Insects notified authors of three papers selected to receive “Insects 2022 Best Paper Award” for research and review articles published in Insects from January 1 to December 31, 2022.
One of the winning papers was co-authored by Russanne Low, PhD, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES). Low is a member of the NASA Earth Science Education Collaborative (NESEC), a NASA Science Activation project, and science lead for the Global Learning & Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Mosquito Habitat Mapper.
The paper – Integrating global citizen science platforms to enable next-generation surveillance of invasive and vector mosquitoes – was published as part of a special issue of Insects on Citizen Science Approaches to Vector Surveillance. It is in the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric, which is a high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. The scoring algorithm takes various factors into account, such as the relative reach of the different sources of attention. The paper has been cited 23 times.
Papers were selected by the journal’s Award Committee according to the following criteria:
– Scientific merit and broad impact;
– Originality of the research objectives and/or the ideas presented;
– Creativity of the study design or uniqueness of the approaches and concepts;
– Clarity of presentation;
– Citations and downloads.
Each winner of the best paper award will receive CHF 500 and a chance to publish a paper free of charge in Insects in 2024 after peer review.
The paper is a result of a collaboration by IGES with University of South Florida, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and iNaturalist.
Following is the full citation: Ryan M. Carney, Connor Mapes, Russanne D. Low, Alex Long, Anne Bowser, David Durieux, Karlene Rivera, Berj Dekramanjian, Frederic Bartumeus, Daniel Guerrero, Carrie E. Seltzer, Farhat Azam, Sriram Chellappan, John R. B. Palmer.Role of Insects in Human Society Citizen Science Approaches to Vector Surveillance. Insects 2022, 13(8), 675; https://doi.org/10.3390/insects13080675 – 27 Jul 2022
NESEC is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AE28A and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn
Screenshot of the Global Mosquito Observations interactive dashboard that combines various types of observations from data streams into an interoperable visualization. Each color-coded dot represents a citizen scientist’s observation and can be clicked to access the associated photos and data. Share
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Last Updated Sep 03, 2024 Editor NASA Science Editorial Team Related Terms
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