It’s one of the biggest solar flares in years, and it’s coming this way.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured images on Wednesday of the most powerful flare recorded since at least 2008, when the current solar cycle began.
It’s one of the biggest solar flares in years, and it’s coming this way.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured images on Wednesday of the most powerful flare recorded since at least 2008, when the current solar cycle began.
Solar cycles are 11-year periods when the sun’s activity waxes and wanes, the space agency said.
Despite the flare’s power, the sun is actually in a period of waning activity.
“We are heading toward solar minimum, but the interesting thing about that is you can still have events, they’re just not as frequent,” Rob Steenburgh, a scientist at NASA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, told Space.com. “We’re not having X-flares every day for a week, for instance ― the activity is less frequent, but no less potentially strong.”
The sun as seen from Mercury, which is about 36 million miles from the sun or 39 percent of the distance from Earth to the sun. On Mercury, the sun looms about three times larger than it does on Earth.
Venus
The sun as (almost) seen from Venus, which is about 67 million miles from the sun (72 percent of the distance from Earth to the sun). Seen from beneath Venus’ dense, sulfuric acid-laden clouds, the sun is no more than a dimly glowing patch in the perpetual overcast. If it could be seen, it would be about half again larger than it appears in Earth’s sky.
Earth
Earth is 93 million miles from the sun. At this distance, the sun covers an area in the sky about half a degree wide. The moon covers the same area. This means that when the moon passes between the sun and our planet, we are treated to a solar eclipse like the one shown here.
Mars
The sun as seen from Mars, which is about 142 million miles from the sun. Since Mars is one-and-a-half times farther from the sun than Earth is, the sun appears correspondingly smaller in the planet’s dusty sky.
Jupiter
The sun as seen from Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. Jupiter is about 484 million miles from the sun, or about 5.2 times farther than the distance from Earth to the sun. Here we see Jupiter about to eclipse a sun five times smaller than the one we see from Earth. Sunlight passing through the planet’s dense atmosphere illuminates it in a ring of red light.
Saturn
The sun as seen from Saturn, which is about 888 million miles from the sun. That's about 9.5 times farther than the distance from Earth to the sun. Here, crystals of water and gases including ammonia refract the sunlight, creating beautiful optical effects such as haloes and sundogs. Although sunlight is about 100 times dimmer on Saturn than on Earth, the sun would still be far too bright to look at without eye protection.
Uranus
The sun as seen from Ariel, one of Uranus's moons. Uranus is about 1.8 billion miles from the sun, or about 19 times farther than the distance from Earth to the sun.
Neptune
The sun as seen from Triton, one of Neptune's moons. Neptune is about 2.8 billion miles from the sun. That's about 30 times farther than the distance from Earth to the sun. Clouds of dust and gas spewing from one of Triton's powerful cryogeysers are partially obscuring a tiny sun, now but one-thirtieth the size as seen from Earth.
Pluto
The sun as seen from Pluto, which has an average distance from the sun of about 3.7 billion miles. That's about 40 times the distance from Earth to the sun. From here, the sunlight is 1,600 times dimmer than on Earth. Still, that's 250 times brighter than a full moon here on Earth -- bright enough to outshine every other object in the sky and hard to look at directly.
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