A Solar Flare of Many Colors

By Nancy Atkinson - January 6, 2012 at 4:16 PM UTC | Solar Astronomy

Here's a great look at a beautiful, leaping C2.2-Class solar flare from the Sun on January 5, 2012. The Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the event and what's awesome is how SDO can video one event in several different wavelengths.

From the SDO team:

The first view is 304 angstroms showing the cooler dense plumes of plasma (filaments and prominences). The temperature is at about 90,000 F.

The "Yellow" view is 171 angstroms and shows the coronal loops where plasma moves along magnetic field lines very well. The temperatures seen here are at approx. 1.8 million F.

The "Blue" view is 335 angstroms and highlights the active region of the outer atmosphere of the Sun, the corona. Active regions, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections appear bright here.

The last two views are composites of three wavelengths added together; 304, 193 and 171.

The actual event happened for approximately 1.5 hours.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com