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Oct 16, 2024 · During solar maximum (left), the sun's magnetic field weakens, allowing more sunspots to appear and unleashing more solar storms than during solar minimum (right). (Image credit: NASA/Solar ...
- 15 signs the sun is gearing up for its explosive peak — the ...
The most powerful solar flares are X-class flares, which are...
- 15 signs the sun is gearing up for its explosive peak — the ...
- The Unruly Dynamo
- Sunspots, Solar Flares and Cmes
- Monitoring Space Weather
- Forecasting Space Weather
The sun’s cycle is marked from minimum to minimum, so the solar maximum occurs about halfway through the cycle. Scientists are not certain why the cycles consistently last about 11 years, but they do understand the mechanisms that cause solar activity like solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). The sun’s magnetic field, like Earth’s, is ge...
Solar activity has three basic ingredients: differential rotation, plasma and magnetic fields, says C. Alex Young, a solar astrophysicist and associate director of science for the Heliophysics Science Divisionat NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Differential rotation means that the sun rotates at different speeds and directions a...
When CMEs interact with Earth’s magnetic field, they can wreak havoc on our technologies. So scientists keep a close eye on such activity. A variety of satellites, including NASA’s SOHO (SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory), STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) and SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory), and ground-based observatories stare at...
While science’s tools to observe and study solar activity are ever improving, scientists still don’t know when solar flares or CMEs will occur until they already have. A prime example of the challenge of forecasting solar activity is the 2003 Great Halloween Storms, which occurred a couple of years after the last solar maximum, when the sun seemed ...
Jul 4, 2023 · In 2022, there were fivefold more C-class and M-class solar flares than there were in 2021, and year on year, the number of the most powerful, X-class solar flares is also increasing, according to ...
- Rising sunspot numbers. The main way scientists track solar cycle progression is by counting the number of sunspots on our home star's surface. These dark patches are a sign that the sun's magnetic field is getting tangled, which ramps up solar activity.
- X-class flare frequency. Solar flares are bright flashes of light and radiation launched from sunspots. Sometimes they're accompanied by enormous, magnetized clouds of fast-moving particles, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
- Gigantic sunspot. During the build-up to solar maximum, not only do sunspots become more common but they also start to grow much larger. On June 27 of this year, a dark patch, named AR3354, emerged on the solar surface, and within 48 hours, the sunspot's surface area had swelled to 1.35 billion square miles (3.5 billion square kilometers), or 10 times wider than Earth.
- Eerie airglow. One of the most visually stunning indicators that solar maximum is approaching is a rare aurora-like phenomenon known as airglow. Unlike auroras, which form when highly energetic particles from CMEs or solar wind penetrate Earth's magnetosphere and excite gas molecules in the upper atmosphere, airglow is produced by more gradual solar radiation, which becomes more intense in the lead-up to solar maximum.
Mar 4, 2024 · This activity spike is caused by the sun's magnetic-field lines gradually becoming more tangled. But at some point during solar maximum, these magnetic-field lines snap, resulting in the total ...
Oct 17, 2024 · The Sun on 16 October 2024 in 171, 193, and 211 angstrom wavelengths. (NASA SDO) The Sun is a dependable presence in our lives, and that's good news for us because it's vital for our very existence on this planet. But that doesn't mean the Sun is intrinsically constant: our star undergoes changes of its own, one cycle of which is the 11-year ...
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Oct 18, 2024 · Solar maximum is the peak of the solar cycle — when the average number of sunspots is larger than at any other time during the cycle. So, it happens roughly every 11 years but the time between ...
