Our Sun shooting powerful flares into space doesn’t represent anything new. But when it happens, it reminds us all about how truly vulnerable we all are in the face of nature’s wrath. In the very distant future, our star will even reveal its full dark side to us when it will explode and kill all life forms, if there will exist any at that point (roughly 5 billion years from now).
But until that dreadful moment, we have other things to point out about the Sun. One of them is a recent powerful flare that was ejected into space, as discovered by NASA, which is a piece of information brought by Space.com.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spots the outburst
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spotted the solar flare that can be considered mid-level or of the M5.5 class. It occurred on Thursday, January 20, and had its peak at 1:01 a.m. EST (0601 GMT).
Luckily enough, there’s no need to worry too much that Earth will be impacted by the solar flare. However, if the flare was to hit our beloved planet square-on, it could have caused radio blackouts in polar regions.
It’s nice to see that astronomers keep giving our star a lot of attention. Back in December 2021, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe achieved an amazing performance by “touching” the Sun. The probe made it very close to the Sun.
Nour Raouafi, who’s a Parker project scientist, explains more about what the achievement meant for science, as quoted by NASA’s website:
Flying so close to the Sun, Parker Solar Probe now senses conditions in the magnetically dominated layer of the solar atmosphere – the corona – that we never could before,
We see evidence of being in the corona in magnetic field data, solar wind data, and visually in images. We can actually see the spacecraft flying through coronal structures that can be observed during a total solar eclipse.
It’s sure a lot better to have the Sun as a friend rather than a foe!
