Astrophysicist Tamitha Skov, a specialist in Solar Physics, posted a video on Twitter showing solar flares on February 2, 2023, a Thursday.
The video shows filaments of matter escaping the Sun at 96 kilometers per second. Look:
Talk about Polar Vortex! Material from a northern prominence just broke away from the main filament & is now circulating in a massive polar vortex around the north pole of our Star. Implications for understanding the Sun’s atmospheric dynamics above 55° here cannot be overstated! pic.twitter.com/1SKhunaXvP
— Dr. Tamitha Skov (@TamithaSkov) February 2, 2023
Perhaps these images of solar flares make you miss our Sun with a friendly face from childhood cartoons. And, despite the astonishment that this event causes, solar flares are natural events on this star.
Unlike eruptions on Earth, solar flares are explosions that happen on the surface of the Sun (yes, pretty much like that joke “The Floor is Lava”).
These explosions happen because of the star’s magnetic fields interacting and releasing large amounts of energy. When these bursts are very intense, we can visualize these filaments, like the one reported by Tamitha Skov.
Why are these solar flares of concern?
First, it is worth considering that this level of high activity from the Sun was already expected for this year. For example, in January, there were solar flares daily.
In general, eruptions are classified according to their strength: the two highest are Class X eruptions, and the ones we were able to observe this year are Class M.
The concern with these cases of solar eruption that happened is due to the escape speed of the filaments that we see in the video.
In recent decades, astronomers have been observing the behavior of solar activities and have never witnessed a filament break off with such intensity from the Sun.
As Skov commented:
“The material really did seem to have come loose, circling the pole at 60 degrees latitude for about 8 hours, at a speed of about 96 km per second.”
This caught the attention of the scientific community, which is analyzing the phenomenon to better understand what happened. However, there are already indications that the Sun is more active in this cycle than usual.
