The NASA, from his twitter account dedicated to the Sun, shared a very nice photo on the 27th: the king of stars was happy. “Today, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the Sun ‘smiling.’ Seen through ultraviolet light, these dark patches on the Sun are known as coronal spots and they are regions where the solar wind sprouts quickly into space, “they explain in the tweet.
What seems like a curious image without more hides, in reality, a whole phenomenology that solar physicists still do not fully understand.
Say cheese! ????
Today, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught the Sun “smiling.” Seen in ultraviolet light, these dark patches on the Sun are known as coronal holes and are regions where fast solar wind gushes out into space. pic.twitter.com/hVRXaN7Z31
— NASA Sun, Space & Scream ???? (@NASASun) October 26, 2022
Solar wind is common in our Solar System. These are streams of charged particles traveling at enormous speeds released from the Sun’s corona, our star’s upper atmosphere. Normally, on Earth we do not notice their effects, since they collide with our magnetic field, which acts as a barrier.
However, on some occasions there are strong coronal mass ejections or flares that can reach us in the form of solar storms. The most usual consequences perceived from our planet are the Aurora borealis: the large number of charged particles arriving from the Sun collide with our atmosphere, interacting with our magnetosphere and creating the colorful celestial lights that normally only occur at polar altitudes, although they can occur in more unusual ones if the storm is stronger than the normal.
But there are also other more harmful effects, although usually rarer: in the case of the most extreme solar storms, these charged particles can hit our orbiting satellites squarely. For example, last March, SpaceX reported that forty of its Starlink ‘satellite soldiers’ were literally ‘fried’ by a solar storm. They can even affect terrestrial networks, as happened during the so-called Carrington event, which in 1859 caused the collapse of fledgling telegraph lines around the world.
The ‘smile’ that precedes the storm
These coronal holes often precede solar storms that can reach us in just hours, which is why experts are very attentive to each of the spots that appear on the surface of the Sun. In fact, this photo of the past day 26 preceded a storm that hit Earth this Friday, just two days later, as explained by SpaceWather.com.
Our star has an 11-year activity cycle determined by the number of spots. At this time we are reaching a solar maximum, so it is normal for more solar storms to occur in this period, such as those recorded in recent months.
Although a ‘quiet’ maximum was expected, like the previous one, all the predictions fell short and every week very powerful flares and flares are recorded that our star launches throughout the Solar System. And that we have not yet reached the peak of maximum activity, which is expected for 2025.
Still, calm down. «Don’t be worried, just be prepared. We cannot control nature, but we can understand it », he explained to ABC Javier Rodriguez-PachecoProfessor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Alcalá (UAH) and principal investigator of EPD, the acronym for the Energetic Particle Detector instrument (Detector de Particles Energéticas in its Spanish translation) aboard the Solar Orbiter mission, a spacecraft that is approaching the Sun to closely ‘scrutinize’ our star and unravel some of its mysteries, including solar cycles.
Missions such as Solar Orbiter, from the European Space Agency, or Parker Solar Probe, from NASA, will help us understand how the Sun works, which, despite being our closest star, we still do not fully understand.