The sun emitted two coronal mass ejections (CMEs) today, September 11. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, jointly owned by the European Space Agency and NASA, captured some spectacular photos of the event. NASA's Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory also captured some photos of the flare.
Scientists use photos like these to find out information about CMEs, like the speed at which they occur, how strong they are, and how large they are.
The CMEs came from the same region of the sun where a very large flare emitted yesterday, September 10. The flare was an X-class, which is unusually large. X-class flares are the largest, most extreme flares ever known to emit from the Sun. The flare was at its highest at 1:48 p.m. EDT on Wednesday.
NASA has been tracking the sun's flares over the past few years with its Solar Dynamics Observatory. The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) project began in February 2010, over four years ago. The scientists hope to learn more about how geomagnetic activity on the sun affects "space weather," conditions in the area that surrounds the Sun, including the Earth's atmosphere. The NOAA, the National Weather Service, is helping to analyze and predict space weather based on data from NASA.
It is very rare for a flare from the Sun to have a large impact here on Earth, but weather from the Sun can potentially scramble radio signals or other wave-based technology. The more we learn about space weather, the more prepared we can be for potential lapses in radio or electronics on Earth.
NOAA is tracking the potential effects of this space weather from the Sun and how it might affect things on Earth. Their predictions are available for the public online at https://spaceweather.gov.
A coronal mass ejection is a major explosion of solar winds interacting with magnetic fields on the Sun's surface, which is ejected from the Sun and reaches space. The Sun is the only known source of space weather. Scientists don't currently know much about space weather and how it influences the solar system, but NOAA is teaming up with NASA to learn more about it.
The SDO captured some more spectacular footage of a solar flare on August 24. It will be exciting to see what other rare solar events they uncover in the next few months as the SDO project continues.
