NASA released a photograph earlier this week showing the sun's magnetic field when it appeared less than a week earlier and glimpsed what has been described as one of the many solar "explosions" that are otherwise invisible to the naked eye.
The photo was posted on Thursday on the NASA website, and as explained in a short press release, scientists from the space agency's Solar Dynamics Observatory used computer modeling techniques to create an image of the sun's magnetic field as it appeared on Friday, 10 August. NASA noted that a large number of the field lines concentrated in the right central area of the sun, and to a lesser extent on the right.
As further explained in a report from Live Science the phenomenon depicted on NASA's new photo could be considered as an example of how the sun "explodes constantly." Although such events are almost impossible for human eyes to see, these are intense actions that occur when vast amounts of plasma, radiation and electromagnetic energy fall from the surface of the sun.
According to Live Science the white lines on NASA's photograph represent "powerful" electromagnetic eruptions that happen when the extremely hot, highly charged particles that form both the sun's magnetic field and the surface plasma interact. The publication added that some of the solar bursts depicted can reach such great distances, resulting in solar winds and other weather-related peculiarities, while others move back and forth from the surface of the sun and possibly even cause more extreme sun disturbances.
The magnetic field of the sun displayed via NASA https://t.co/VnGAzs21qZ pic.twitter.com/2oapoXVj8U
– VirtualAstro (@VirtualAstro) August 16, 2018
"These recurring loops of magnetic energy can stir the pot further from charged particles on the surface of the sun, resulting in more and larger explosions of solar weather, including solar flares and large belching of radiation known as coronal mass ejections, " Live Science explained .
Although the sun is in a relative silence at the moment because of where it is in the 11-year cycle of activity of its magnetic field, the end of this cycle, known as a solar maximum, is often preceded by an increase in solar energy. r disorders, including some where people felt the impact of solar storms in one way or another. An example of this was the Carrington event in September 1859, through which aurora & # 39; s or northern lights became visible at southern locations such as Cuba and Hawaii and telegraphic disturbances.
The Canadian province of Québec also suffered a complete blackout on March 13, 1989, as a result of a solar storm, in which aurora's re-appear in areas as far south as Cuba and Texas, as called by Scientific American in an article from 2009. While both the Carrington event and the Blackout of Quebec took place at a time when the magnetic field of the sun was close to the maximum of the sun, Live Science remarked that the last maximum solar period, which took place in April 2014, "much was less moved" in comparison.
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