NASA On Air: NASA Spacecraft Observes Solar Flare (3/13/2014)
LEAD: What is a X-class solar flare? It is one of the most intense categories of massive bursts of light from the sun.
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This flare erupted on Tuesday, January 7, 2014.
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For scale, the dark-colored sun spot is huge...about twice the size of Earth.
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NASA’s SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory) spacecraft, launched in 2010, studies the sun’s magnetic fields.
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Flares are related to the reconnection, or short-circuiting, of magnetic loops
TAG: Though not a threat to humans, SOME solar flares can disrupt GPS and communication signals.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
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Producer
- Howard Joe Witte (ADNET)
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Project support
- Aaron E. Lepsch (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
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ID: 11136 Produced Video
Sun unleashes first X-class flare of 2014
Read moreThe sun emitted a significant solar flare peaking at 1:32 p.m. EST on Jan.7, 2014. This is the first significant flare of 2014, and follows on the heels of mid-level flare earlier in the day. Each flare was centered over a different area of a large sunspot group currently situated at the center of the sun, about half way through its 14-day journey across the front of the disk along with the rotation of the sun. This flare is classified as an X1.2-class flare. X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength. An X2 is twice as intense as an X1, an X3 is three times as intense, etc. ||
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ID: 11199 Produced Video
X Marks the Spot: SDO Sees Reconnection
Read moreTwo NASA spacecraft have provided the most comprehensive movie ever of a mysterious process at the heart of all explosions on the sun: magnetic reconnection. Magnetic reconnection happens when magnetic field lines come together, break apart, and then exchange partners, snapping into new positions and releasing a jolt of magnetic energy. This process lies at the heart of giant explosions on the sun such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which can fling radiation and particles across the solar system. Magnetic field lines, themselves, are invisible, but the sun's charged plasma particles course along their length. Space telescopes can see that material appearing as bright lines looping and arcing through the sun’s atmosphere, and so map out the presence of magnetic field lines. Looking at a series of images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), scientists saw two bundles of field lines move toward each other, meet briefly to form what appeared to be an “X” and then shoot apart with one set of lines and its attendant particles leaping into space and one set falling back down onto the sun. To confirm what they were seeing, the scientists turned to a second NASA spacecraft, the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI). RHESSI collects spectrograms, a kind of data that can show where exceptionally hot material is present in any given event on the sun. RHESSI showed hot pockets of solar material forming above and below the reconnection point, an established signature of such an event. By combining the SDO and RHESSI data, the scientists were able to describe the process of what they were seeing, largely confirming previous models and theories, while revealing new, three-dimensional aspects of the process. ||
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