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By NASA
6 min read
NASA, NOAA: Sun Reaches Maximum Phase in 11-Year Solar Cycle
In a teleconference with reporters on Tuesday, representatives from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the international Solar Cycle Prediction Panel announced that the Sun has reached its solar maximum period, which could continue for the next year.
The solar cycle is a natural cycle the Sun goes through as it transitions between low and high magnetic activity. Roughly every 11 years, at the height of the solar cycle, the Sun’s magnetic poles flip — on Earth, that’d be like the North and South poles swapping places every decade — and the Sun transitions from being calm to an active and stormy state.
Visible light images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory highlight the appearance of the Sun at solar minimum (left, Dec. 2019) versus solar maximum (right, May 2024). During solar minimum, the Sun is often spotless. Sunspots are associated with solar activity and are used to track solar cycle progress. For these images and more relating to solar maximum, visit https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14683.
NASA/SDO Images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory highlight the appearance of the Sun at solar minimum (left, December 2019) versus solar maximum (right, May 2024). These images are in the 171-angstrom wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light, which reveals the active regions on the Sun that are more common during solar maximum. For these images and more relating to solar maximum, visit https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14683.
NASA/SDO
NASA and NOAA track sunspots to determine and predict the progress of the solar cycle — and ultimately, solar activity. Sunspots are cooler regions on the Sun caused by a concentration of magnetic field lines. Sunspots are the visible component of active regions, areas of intense and complex magnetic fields on the Sun that are the source of solar eruptions.
“During solar maximum, the number of sunspots, and therefore, the amount of solar activity, increases,” said Jamie Favors, director, Space Weather Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This increase in activity provides an exciting opportunity to learn about our closest star — but also causes real effects at Earth and throughout our solar system.”
The solar cycle is the natural cycle of the Sun as it transitions between low and high activity. During the most active part of the cycle, known as solar maximum, the Sun can unleash immense explosions of light, energy, and solar radiation — all of which create conditions known as space weather. Space weather can affect satellites and astronauts in space, as well as communications systems — such as radio and GPS — and power grids on Earth.
Credits: Beth Anthony/NASA Solar activity strongly influences conditions in space known as space weather. This can affect satellites and astronauts in space, as well as communications and navigation systems — such as radio and GPS — and power grids on Earth. When the Sun is most active, space weather events become more frequent. Solar activity has led to increased aurora visibility and impacts on satellites and infrastructure in recent months.
During May 2024, a barrage of large solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) launched clouds of charged particles and magnetic fields toward Earth, creating the strongest geomagnetic storm at Earth in two decades — and possibly among the strongest displays of auroras on record in the past 500 years.
May 3–May 9, 2024, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory observed 82 notable solar flares. The flares came mainly from two active regions on the Sun called AR 13663 and AR 13664. This video highlights all flares classified at M5 or higher with nine categorized as X-class solar flares.
Credit: NASA “This announcement doesn’t mean that this is the peak of solar activity we’ll see this solar cycle,” said Elsayed Talaat, director of space weather operations at NOAA. “While the Sun has reached the solar maximum period, the month that solar activity peaks on the Sun will not be identified for months or years.”
Scientists will not be able to determine the exact peak of this solar maximum period for many months because it’s only identifiable after they’ve tracked a consistent decline in solar activity after that peak. However, scientists have identified that the last two years on the Sun have been part of this active phase of the solar cycle, due to the consistently high number of sunspots during this period. Scientists anticipate that the maximum phase will last another year or so before the Sun enters the declining phase, which leads back to solar minimum. Since 1989, the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel — an international panel of experts sponsored by NASA and NOAA — has worked together to make their prediction for the next solar cycle.
Solar cycles have been tracked by astronomers since Galileo first observed sunspots in the 1600s. Each solar cycle is different — some cycles peak for larger and shorter amounts of time, and others have smaller peaks that last longer.
Sunspot number over the previous 24 solar cycles. Scientists use sunspots to track solar cycle progress; the dark spots are associated with solar activity, often as the origins for giant explosions — such as solar flares or coronal mass ejections — which can spew light, energy, and solar material out into space. For these images and more relating to solar maximum, visit https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14683.
NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center “Solar Cycle 25 sunspot activity has slightly exceeded expectations,” said Lisa Upton, co-chair of the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel and lead scientist at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. “However, despite seeing a few large storms, they aren’t larger than what we might expect during the maximum phase of the cycle.”
The most powerful flare of the solar cycle so far was an X9.0 on Oct. 3 (X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength).
NOAA anticipates additional solar and geomagnetic storms during the current solar maximum period, leading to opportunities to spot auroras over the next several months, as well as potential technology impacts. Additionally, though less frequent, scientists often see fairly significant storms during the declining phase of the solar cycle.
The Solar Cycle 25 forecast, as produced by the Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel. Sunspot number is an indicator of solar cycle strength — the higher the sunspot number, the stronger the cycle. For these images and more relating to solar maximum, visit https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14683.
NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center NASA and NOAA are preparing for the future of space weather research and prediction. In December 2024, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission will make its closest-ever approach to the Sun, beating its own record of closest human-made object to the Sun. This will be the first of three planned approaches for Parker at this distance, helping researchers to understand space weather right at the source.
NASA is launching several missions over the next year that will help us better understand space weather and its impacts across the solar system.
Space weather predictions are critical for supporting the spacecraft and astronauts of NASA’s Artemis campaign. Surveying this space environment is a vital part of understanding and mitigating astronaut exposure to space radiation.
NASA works as a research arm of the nation’s space weather effort. To see how space weather can affect Earth, please visit NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, the U.S. government’s official source for space weather forecasts, watches, warnings, and alerts.
By Abbey Interrante
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media Contact:
Sarah Frazier, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
sarah.frazier@nasa.gov
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Abbey Interrante
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Last Updated Oct 15, 2024 Related Terms
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:00:29 Solar wind is a never-ending stream of charged particles coming from the Sun. Rather than a constant breeze, this wind is rather gusty. As solar wind particles travel through space, they interact with the Sun's variable magnetic field, creating chaotic and fluctuating motion known as turbulence.
This video confirms something long suspected: the turbulent motion of solar wind begins very close to the Sun, inside the solar atmosphere known as the corona. Small disturbances affecting solar wind in the corona are carried outward and expand, generating turbulent flow further out in space.
By blocking out direct light coming from the Sun, the Metis coronagraph instrument on Solar Orbiter is able to capture the fainter visible and ultraviolet light coming from the solar corona. Its high-resolution images show the detailed structure and movement within the corona, revealing how solar wind motion already becomes turbulent at its roots.
The red-tinted ring in the video shows Metis observations made on 12 October 2022. At the time, the spacecraft was just 43.4 million km from the Sun, less than a third of the Sun–Earth distance. The video of the Sun in the centre of the video was recorded by Solar Orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on the same day. (Read more about Solar Orbiter’s instruments here.)
“This new analysis provides the first-ever evidence for the onset of fully developed turbulence in the Sun’s corona. Solar Orbiter’s Metis coronagraph was able to detect it very close to the Sun, closer than any spacecraft could approach the Sun and make local measurements,” explains Daniel Müller, ESA’s Solar Orbiter Project Scientist.
Turbulence affects how solar wind is heated, how it moves through the Solar System and how it interacts with the magnetic fields of planets and moons it passes through. Understanding solar wind turbulence is crucial for predicting space weather and its effects on Earth.
‘Metis observation of the onset of fully developed turbulence in the solar corona’ by Daniele Telloni et al. was published today in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
[Video description: The Sun is shown in the centre, surrounded by a ring of data from Solar Orbiter’s Metis coronagraph. The data show changes in brightness of the solar corona, which directly relates to the density of charged particles. These changes are made visible by subtracting consecutive coronal brightness images taken two minutes apart. Red regions show no change, while white and black regions highlight positive and negative changes in brightness. This reveals how charged solar wind particles within the corona move in a chaotic, turbulent way. The video repeats three times.]
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
An astronaut aboard the International Space Station photographed wildfire smoke from Nova Scotia billowing over the Atlantic Ocean in May 2023. Warm weather and lack of rain fueled blazes across Canada last year, burning 5% of the country’s forests.NASA Extreme wildfires like these will continue to have a large impact on global climate.
Stoked by Canada’s warmest and driest conditions in decades, extreme forest fires in 2023 released about 640 million metric tons of carbon, NASA scientists have found. That’s comparable in magnitude to the annual fossil fuel emissions of a large industrialized nation. NASA funded the study as part of its ongoing mission to understand our changing planet.
The research team used satellite observations and advanced computing to quantify the carbon emissions of the fires, which burned an area roughly the size of North Dakota from May to September 2023. The new study, published on Aug. 28 in the journal Nature, was led by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
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Carbon monoxide from Canada wildfires curls thousands of miles across North America in this animation showing data from summer 2023. Lower concentrations are shown in purple; higher concentrations are in yellow. Red triangles indicate fire hotspots.NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center They found that the Canadian fires released more carbon in five months than Russia or Japan emitted from fossil fuels in all of 2022 (about 480 million and 291 million metric tons, respectively). While the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from both wildfires and fossil fuel combustion cause extra warming immediately, there’s an important distinction, the scientists noted. As the forest regrows, the amount of carbon emitted from fires will be reabsorbed by Earth’s ecosystems. The CO2 emitted from the burning of fossil fuels is not readily offset by any natural processes.
An ESA (European Space Agency) instrument designed to measure air pollution observed the fire plumes over Canada. The TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument, or TROPOMI, flies aboard the Sentinel 5P satellite, which has been orbiting Earth since 2017. TROPOMI has four spectrometers that measure and map trace gases and fine particles (aerosols) in the atmosphere.
The scientists started with the end result of the fires: the amount of carbon monoxide (CO) in the atmosphere during the fire season. Then they “back-calculated” how large the emissions must have been to produce that amount of CO. They were able to estimate how much CO2 was released based on ratios between the two gases in the fire plumes.
“What we found was that the fire emissions were bigger than anything in the record for Canada,” said Brendan Byrne, a JPL scientist and lead author of the new study. “We wanted to understand why.”
Warmest Conditions Since at Least 1980
Wildfire is essential to the health of forests, clearing undergrowth and brush and making way for new plant life. In recent decades, however, the number, severity, and overall size of wildfires have increased, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Contributing factors include extended drought, past fire management strategies, invasive species, and the spread of residential communities into formerly less developed areas.
To explain why Canada’s fire season was so intense in 2023, the authors of the new study cited tinderbox conditions across its forests. Climate data revealed the warmest and driest fire season since at least 1980. Temperatures in the northwest part of the country — where 61% of fire emissions occurred — were more than 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.6 degrees Celsius) above average from May through September. Precipitation was also more than 3 inches (8 centimeters) below average for much of the year.
Driven in large part by these conditions, many of the fires grew to enormous sizes. The fires were also unusually widespread, charring some 18 million hectares of forest from British Columbia in the west to Quebec and the Atlantic provinces in the east. The area of land that burned was more than eight times the 40-year average and accounted for 5% of Canadian forests.
“Some climate models project that the temperatures we experienced last year will become the norm by the 2050s,” Byrne said. “The warming, coupled with lack of moisture, is likely to trigger fire activity in the future.”
If events like the 2023 Canadian forest fires become more typical, they could impact global climate. That’s because Canada’s vast forests compose one of the planet’s important carbon sinks, meaning that they absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere than they release. The scientists said that it remains to be seen whether Canadian forests will continue to absorb carbon at a rapid rate or whether increasing fire activity could offset some of the uptake, diminishing the forests’ capacity to forestall climate warming.
News Media Contacts
Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-0307 / 626-379-6874
jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov / andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov
Written by Sally Younger
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Last Updated Aug 28, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
By Jessica Barnett
From Earth, one might be tempted to view the Sun as a unique celestial object like no other, as it’s the star our home planet orbits and the one our planet relies on most for heat and light. But if you took a step back and compared the Sun to the other stars NASA has studied over the years, how would it compare? Would it still be so unique?
The Full-sun Ultraviolet Rocket SpecTrograph (FURST) aims to answer those questions when it launches aboard a Black Brant IX sounding rocket Aug. 11 at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
“When we talk about ‘Sun as a star’, we’re treating it like any other star in the night sky as opposed to the unique object we rely on for human life. It’s so exciting to study the Sun from that vantage point,” said Adam Kobelski, institutional principal investigator for FURST and a research astrophysicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
The Full-sun Ultraviolet Rocket SpecTrograph (FURST) undergoes testing at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in preparation for launch on Aug. 11. FURST will be launched aboard a Black Bryant IX sounding rocket and will observe the Sun in vacuum ultraviolet (VUV). The instrument was designed and built at Montana State University. NASA Marshall provided the camera, supplied avionics, and designed and built its calibration system. Credit: Montana State University FURST will obtain the first high-resolution spectra of the “Sun as a star” in vacuum ultraviolet (VUV), a light wavelength that is absorbed in Earth’s atmosphere meaning it can only be observed from space. Astronomers have studied other stars in the vacuum ultraviolet with orbiting telescopes, however these instruments are too sensitive to be pointed to the Sun. The recent advancements in high-resolution VUV spectroscopy now allow for the same observations of our own star, the Sun.
“These are wavelengths that Hubble Space Telescope is really great at observing, so there is a decent amount of Hubble observations of stars in ultraviolet wavelengths, but we don’t have comparable observations of our star in this wavelength range,” said Kobelski. Marshall was the lead field center for the design, development, and construction of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Because Hubble is too sensitive to point at Earth’s Sun, new instruments were needed to get a spectrum of the entire Sun that is of a similar quality to Hubble’s observations of other stars. Marshall built the camera, supplied avionics, and designed and built a new calibration system for the FURST mission. Montana State University (MSU), which leads the FURST mission in partnership with Marshall, built the optical system, which includes seven optics that will feed into the camera that will essentially create seven exposures, covering the entire ultraviolet wavelength range.
Charles Kankelborg, a heliophysics professor at MSU and principal investigator for FURST, described the mission as a very close collaboration with wide-ranging implications.
“Our mission will obtain the first far ultraviolent spectrum of the Sun as a star,” Kankelborg said. “This is a key piece of information that has been missing for decades. With it, we will place the Sun in context with other stars.”
Kobelski echoed the sentiment.
“How well do the observations and what we know about our Sun compare to our observations or what we know of other stars?” Kobelski said. “You’d expect that we know all this information about the Sun – it’s right there – but it turns out, we actually don’t. If we can get these same observations or same wavelengths as we’ve observed from these other sources, we can start to connect the dots and connect our Sun to other stars.”
Montana State University alumnus Jake Davis, left, Professor Charles Kankelborg, and doctoral students Catharine “Cappy” Bunn and Suman Panda, pose at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, where they are preparing for the launch of the FURST rocket mission to observe the sun in far ultraviolet.Credit: Montana State University FURST will be the third launch led by Marshall for NASA’s Sounding Rocket Program within five months, making 2024 an active year for the program. Like the Hi-C Flare mission that launched in April, the sounding rocket will launch and open during flight to allow FURST to observe the Sun for approximately five minutes before closing and falling back to Earth’s surface. Marshall team members will be able to calibrate the instruments during launch and flight, as well as retrieve data during flight and soon after landing.
Kobelski and Kankelborg each said they’re grateful for the opportunity to fill the gaps in our knowledge of Earth’s Sun.
The launch will be livestreamed on Sunday, Aug. 11, with a launch window of 11:40 a.m.– 12:40 p.m. CDT. Tune in on NASA’s White Sands Test Facility Launch Channel.
The FURST mission is led by Marshall in partnership with Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, with additional support from the NASA’s Sounding Rockets Office and the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research’s High Altitude Observatory. Launch support is provided at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico by NASA’s Johnson Space Center. NASA’s Sounding Rocket Program is managed by the agency’s Heliophysics Division.
Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256.544.0034
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Aug 09, 2024 EditorBeth RidgewayLocationMarshall Space Flight Center Related Terms
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By NASA
Learn Home Celebrate Heliophysics Big… Heliophysics Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Stories Science Activation Highlights Citizen Science 2 min read
Celebrate Heliophysics Big Year: Free Monthly Webinars on the Sun Touches Everything
Once a month (usually on the first Tuesday), the Heliophysics Education Community meets online to share knowledge and opportunities. During the Heliophysics Big Year (HBY) – a global celebration of the Sun’s influence on Earth and the entire solar system, beginning with the Annular Solar Eclipse on October 14, 2023, continuing through the Total Solar Eclipse on April 8, 2024, and concluding with the Parker Solar Probe’s closest approach to the Sun in December, 2024 – the meetings are structured to include short presentations by subject matter experts both inside and outside NASA.
Challenged by the NASA Heliophysics Division to participate in as many Sun-related activities as possible, the NASA Heliophysics Education community has been hosting these short monthly presentations for formal and informal educators, science communicators, and other heliophysics enthusiasts to promote the understanding of heliophysics in alignment with monthly HBY themes. Presenters and team members from the NASA Science Activation program’s NASA Heliophysics Education Activation Team (NASA HEAT) connect these themes with the Framework of Heliophysics Education in mind, mapping them directly to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) – a set of research-based science content standards for grades K–12. Using the three main questions that heliophysicists investigate as a foundation, NASA HEAT cross-references heliophysics topics with the NGSS Disciplinary Core Ideas to create NGSS-aligned “heliophysics big ideas.” These community meetings welcome an average of 30 attendees, but NASA celebrated a record-breaking 234 attendees for the July meeting, which explored the Sun’s impact on physical and mental health.
Everyone is welcome to participate in upcoming presentations and topics on the following dates at 1 p.m. EDT:
8/6/24 Youth/Informal Education – NASA PUNCH Mission
9/02/24 Environment and Sustainability – Solar Sail
10/15/24 Solar Cycle and Solar Max – National Solar Observatory
11/19/24 Bonus Science
12/03/24 Parker’s Perihelion
Join the Meeting
NASA HEAT 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
Dr. Erin Flynn-Evans of NASA Ames Research Center gave a short presentation of her research on how sunlight affects the behavioral health of astronauts. Share
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Last Updated Aug 06, 2024 Editor NASA Science Editorial Team Related Terms
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