Swirling solar activity appears in shades of orange and yellow.
NASA, the United States’ premier space agency, has recently captivated the world by unveiling a stunning image capturing the sun in the midst of an intense solar flare, showcasing the awe-inspiring power and beauty of our closest star. The sun’s atmosphere, or corona, is a dynamic place where large explosions like solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) occur. These explosions are caused by the sun’s powerful magnetic field, which can become twisted and tangled. When the magnetic field lines reconnect, they release a huge amount of energy, which can be seen in the form of a solar flare or CME.
The space agency said in an Instagram post that the largest object in our solar system, our sun, keeps objects large and small in their orbit, affecting everything from planets to dust with its immense size and magnetic presence.
Solar flares are sudden, bright flashes of light that can be seen on the sun’s surface. They typically last for a few minutes and release a burst of energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation, including X-rays, ultraviolet light, and radio waves.
The near-Earth Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this CME in September 2012, which travelled over 900 miles per second (1,448 kilometres per second), causing an aurora to appear.
Describing the image, the space agency wrote, “Swirling solar activity appears in shades of orange and yellow, with a large jet of orange and red from the bottom left of the image. The surface of the sun is marked with yellow fissures encroaching on the blackness of space.”
