Solar Orbiter and Soho’s view of the giant eruption – close up. Credit: Solar Orbiter Team / EUI, SOHO / LASCO, ESA and NASA
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European Space Agency /[{” attribute=””>NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft has captured the largest solar prominence eruption ever observed in a single image together with the full solar disc.
Solar prominences are large structures of tangled magnetic field lines that keep dense concentrations of solar technology and everyday lives.
This last event occurred on February 15, 2022 and extended millions of kilometers into space. The coronal mass ejection was not directed at the earth. In fact, it’s moving away from us. There are no traces of the eruption on the solar disk facing the spacecraft – which is currently approaching the line of the earth and the sun – which means that it must have originated from the side of the sun facing away from us.
Full Sun Imager’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager image aboard the ESA / NASA spacecraft Solar Orbiter captured a giant solar eruption on February 15, 2022. Solar prominences are large structures made of interconnected magnetic field lines that maintain dense concentrations of solar plasma hovering above the surface. . The surface of the sun often has the shape of arched rings. This is the largest remarkable solar eruption ever observed in a single image with the entire solar disk. Credit: Solar Orbiter / EUI Team / ESA and NASA
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Photos taken by .s “Full Sun Imager” (FSI) Extreme UV imaging (EUI) on Solar Orbiter. FSI is designed to look at the entire solar disk even during sessions near the sun, for example during the upcoming perihelion corridor next month. At the next approach on March 26, which will see the spacecraft pass within 0.3 times the distance between the sun and the earth, the sun will fill a much larger part of the telescope’s field of view. At the moment, there is still a lot of “width margin” around the disc, which means that fantastic details can be captured by FSI in about 3.5 million km, which is five times the radius of the sun.
Other space telescopes such as ESA/NASA SOHO satellites You often see solar activity like this, but either closer to the sun, or further away from the membrane, which blocks the glare from the sun’s disk to allow detailed images of the corona itself. Thus, the appearance observed by the Solar Orbiter is the largest event of its kind captured in a single field of view along with the solar disk, which opens up new opportunities to learn how events like these relate to the solar disk for the first time. At the same time,
There were also other space missions that observed the event, including NASA’s Parker Solar Probe. Next week, Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe will perform joint custom observations during the passage of Parker’s perihelion.
Even spacecraft that are not dedicated to solar science felt their explosion – European Space Agency /[{”attribute=””>JAXABepiColombomissioncurrentlyinthevicinityofMercury’sorbit-detectedamassiveincreaseinreadingsforelectronsprotonsandheavyionswithitsradiationmonitor[{”attribute=””>JAXABepiColombomissioncurrentlyinthevicinityofMercury’sorbit–detectedamassiveincreaseinthereadingsforelectronsprotonsandheavyionswithitsradiationmonitor
And while this event did not send a blast of deadly particles towards Earth, it is an important reminder of the unpredictable nature of the Sun and the importance of understanding and monitoring its behavior. Together with ESA’s future dedicated space weather mission Vigilwhich will provide unique views of events like these, we can better protect our home planet from the Sun’s violent outbursts.
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