Longest-ever observation of stormy region on the Sun provides new clues about space weather
Scientists observed an active region on the Sun for a record 94 days, marking a “milestone in solar physics”.
An image taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft shows a powerful solar flare produced during activity on May 11, 2024, which was associated with strong auroras.
NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio
May 2024 was a tumultuous month for Earth: our planet was rocked by the worst geomagnetic storms in more than 20 years. Storms caused by a series of solar flares disrupted satellites, power grids, etc. GPS And spread the northern light to the south Florida,
An active region on the Sun, NOAA 13664, was pinpointed as the source of the flare. And on Monday scientists revealed this Observed the area for 94 daysWhich is the longest view ever taken of an active region on the Sun.
“This is a milestone in solar physics,” said Ioannis Kontogiannis, a solar physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich), who helped lead the effort. statement“This is the longest continuous series of images ever made of a single active region,”
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It is not easy to observe active areas of the Sun. Because our home star rotates on an axis, any given region is only visible from Earth for a short time before it fades out of view.
The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter mission has helped change that. Since its launch in 2020, researchers have been able to use it to continuously track active regions, providing insight into how solar bursts fuel geomagnetic storms on Earth. But scientists still can’t fully predict how big the eruption will be, which could affect plans to help Earth deal with the potential consequences.
“Even signals on railway lines can be affected and change from red to green or vice versa,” Lewis Harra, lead author of a study detailing the researchers’ results and professor of physics at ETH Zurich, said in the same statement. “It’s really scary.”
In the case of NOAA 13664, the active region originated on the far side of the sun on April 16, 2024, wreaked havoc on Earth and died down sometime after July 18, 2024, disappearing from sight, according to observations. The researchers hope their data will provide new insights to help scientists better track solar weather and understand how it affects our planet.
“We live with this star, so it’s really important that we observe it and try to understand how it works and how it affects our environment,” Kontogiannis said in a recent statement.
Editor’s note (1/5/26): This article was edited after posting to better clarify that the active region disappears from view after July 18, 2024, and to correct the name of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory in the image caption.
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