Remove this ad

sunspot

Yet Another X-Class Flare From AR 1748

May 14, 2013

Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter Last night, as Commander Hadfield and the Expedition 35 crew were returning to Earth in their Soyuz spacecraft, the Sun unleashed yet another X-class flare from active region 1748, the third and most powerful eruption yet from the sunspot region in [...]

Read the full article →

AR1654 is a Monster Sunspot. (And It’s Aiming Our Way.)

January 11, 2013

Active Region 1654 on the Sun’s western limb, seen by SDO on Jan. 11 (NASA/SDO/HMI team. Diagram by J. Major.) Like an enormous cannon that is slowly turning its barrel toward us, the latest giant sunspot region AR1654 is steadily moving into position to face Earth, loaded with plenty of magnetic energy to create M-class [...]

Read the full article →

HI-C Returns Most Detailed Images Ever of the Sun’s Corona

July 23, 2012

NASA’s High Resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C) mission, launched Wednesday, July 11 from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, successfully returned (as promised!) the highest-resolution images of the Sun’s corona ever acquired. These images of the dynamic million-degree region of the Sun’s atmosphere will provide scientists with more information on the complex activity found near the [...]

Read the full article →

A Shimmering, Simmering Sunspot

July 12, 2012

This quick animation made by astrophotographer Alan Friedman shows a 30-minute view of sunspot 1520, a large region of magnetic activity on the Sun that’s currently aimed directly at Earth. Although 1520 has been quiet for the past couple of days, it’s loaded with a delta-class magnetic field — just right for launching powerful X-class [...]

Read the full article →

A Rare Type of Solar Storm Spotted by Satellite

June 1, 2012

When a moderate-sized M-class flare erupted from the Sun on May 17, it sent out a barrage of high-energy solar particles that belied its initial intensity. These particles traveled at nearly the speed of light, crossing the 93 million miles between the Sun and Earth in a mere 20 minutes and impacting our atmosphere, causing [...]

Read the full article →
Remove this ad

← Previous Entries