Technology
Nasa probe films FIRST close-up footage of solar eruption during trip to the Sun
NASA has revealed the first solar eruption footage captured by its new Sun-focussed probe.
The European Space Agency and Nasa’s Solar Orbiter was launched on its mission just over a year ago and managed to capture a mesmerising black and white video on February 12, 2021.
Sometimes solar eruptions are so big they can start geomagnetic storms that leave satellites vulnerable to disruption.
Nasa and the ESA are trying to learn more about them and the impact they can have on Earth.
The scientific term for the solar eruption in the new footage is a ‘coronal mass ejection’, or CME.
Nasa wrote on its blogpost: “This view is from the mission’s SoloHI instrument — short for Solar Orbiter Heliospheric Imager — which watches the solar wind, dust, and cosmic rays that fill the space between the Sun and the planets.
This is an artist’s impression of the Solar Orbiter observing an eruption[/caption]
“It’s a brief, grainy view: Solar Orbiter’s remote sensing won’t enter full science mode until November.
“SoloHI used one of its four detectors at less than 15% of its normal cadence to reduce the amount of data acquired.
“Still, a keen eye can spot the sudden blast of particles, the CME, escaping the Sun, which is off camera to the upper right. The CME starts about halfway through the video as a bright burst – the dense leading edge of the CME – and drifts off screen to the left.”
The first CME observed by the Solar Orbiter is the white stream that races across the top of the screen[/caption]
The Solar Orbitter capturing it’s first CME so soon was actually a happy accident that scientists weren’t expecting.
It was recorded during a close approach which saw the craft fly within 48 million miles of the Sun and then back to a cooler position.
The spacecraft’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager and Metis imager also captured views of the eruption.
Nasa’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory-A spacecraft captured a more colourful version of the event.
That craft has a view that blocks out the Sun’s bright disk so faint phenomena like some solar eruptions can be seen more clearly.
This view of the eruption was captured by an older Nasa spacecraft that blocks out the Sun’s bright disk[/caption]
The new Solar Orbiter is intended to be a ‘game-changer’ for the way scientists research and view CME solar eruptions.
Its official mission begins in November when it will aim to get closer to the Sun than ever before.
So far, the Solar Orbiter has already taken the world’s closest picture of the Sun.
Robin Colaninno, principal investigator for SoloHI, said: “We’ve realized in the last 25 years that there’s a lot that happens to a CME between the surface of the Sun and Earth.
“So we’re hoping to get much better resolution images of all of these outflows by being closer to the Sun.”
Solar storms are known for causing aurora light displays on Earth, like the Northern Lights.
However, they can also be dangerous.
In 1989, a solar flare shot so many electrically charged particles at Earth that the Canadian Province of Quebec lost power for nine hours.
Solar flares may cause issues for our tech on Earth but they could be deadly for an astronaut if they result in injury or interfere with mission control communications.
The Sun is currently at the start of a new 11 year solar cycle, which usually sees eruptions and flares grow more intense and extreme.
These events are expected to peak around 2025 and it’s hoped the Solar Orbiter will observe them all as it aims to fly within 26 million miles of the Sun.
The Sun – all the facts you need to know
What is it, why does it exist, and why is it so ruddy hot all the time?
- The Sun is a huge star that lives at the centre of our solar system
- It’s a nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, and provides most of the energy for life on Earth
- It measures a staggering 865,000 miles across – making it 109 times bigger than Earth
- But its weight is 330,000 times that of Earth, and accounts for almost all of the mass in the Solar System
- The Sun is mostly made up of hydrogen (73%), helium (25%) and then a number of other elements like oyxgen, carbon and iron
- Its surface temperature is around 5,505C
- Scientists describe the Sun as being “middle-aged”
- The Sun formed 4.6billion years ago, and tt’s been in its current state for around four billion years
- It’s expected that it will remain stable for another five billion years
- It doesn’t have enough mass to explode as a supernova
- Instead, we expect it to turn a hulking red giant
- During this phase, it will be so big that it will engulf Mercury, Venus and Earth
- Eventually it will turn into an incredibly hot white dwarf, and will stay that way for trillions of years
Most read in Science
In other space news, a Blood Moon will be taking to the night sky next week.
A Nasa spacecraft has begun a 1.4billion-mile journey back to Earth after collecting rock samples from an ancient asteroid.
And, China’s Mars rover has landed on the Red Planet after a treacherous descent through the Martian atmosphere using a parachute in “seven minutes of terror”.
What do you make of the solar eruption footage? Let us know in the comments…
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