December 16, 2008

A small study on Solar Flare and Solar Atmosphere



What is Solar Flare ?
A solar flare is a violent explosion in a star's (like the Sun's) atmosphere releasing as much energy as 6 × 1025 Joules.Solar flares take place in the solar corona and chromosphere, heating plasma to tens of millions of kelvins and accelerating electrons, protons and heavier ions to near the speed of light. They produce electromagnetic radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum at all wavelengths from long-wave radio to the shortest wavelength gamma rays. Most flares occur in active regions around sunspots, where intense magnetic fields emerge from the Sun's surface into the corona. Flares are powered by the sudden (timescales of minutes to tens of minutes) release of magnetic energy stored in the corona. X-rays and UV radiation emitted by solar flares can affect Earth's ionosphere and disrupt long-range radio communications. Direct radio emission at decimetric wavelengths may disturb operation of radars and other devices operating at these frequencies.

A Solar flare is actually plasma being released from the sun then coming down, hitting a denser object. Solar flares were first observed on the Sun by Richard Christopher Carrington and independently by Richard Hodgson in 1859 as localized brightenings in a sunspot group. Stellar flares have also been observed on a variety of other stars.[]

Recent studies on Solar Flare and Solar Atmosphere :
  • Solar Flare Surprise: Stream Of Perfectly Intact Hydrogen Atoms Detected: Solar flares are the most powerful explosions in the solar system. Packing a punch equal to a hundred million hydrogen bombs, they obliterate everything in their immediate vicinity. Not a single atom should remain intact. At least that's how it's supposed to work.[1]
  • Focused Solar Explosions Get Hotter: Astronomers have discovered that solar flares - explosions in the atmosphere of the sun - get much hotter when they stay "focused". Solar flares are caused by the sudden release of magnetic energy. The largest can release as much energy as a billion one-megaton nuclear bombs.[2]
  • Giant Pipe Organ In The Solar Atmosphere: Astronomers have found that the atmosphere of the Sun plays a kind of heavenly music. The magnetic field in the outer regions (the corona) of our nearest star forms loops that carry waves and behave rather like a musical instrument.[3]
  • Now Playing At The Star Nearest You: The Largest Sunspot In Ten Years Blazes Away With Eruptions: A huge sunspot, thirteen-times larger than the surface area of the Earth and growing, has now rotated with the Sun to face our planet. The sunspot, which is the largest of the current solar cycle, is also the largest to appear in a decade.[4]
  • Extensive Destruction Powers Solar Explosions: Large-scale destruction of magnetic fields in the Sun's atmosphere likely powers enormous solar explosions, according to a new observation from NASA's Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) spacecraft.[5]
  • Hypervelocity Winds Rage In The Sun's Atmosphere: Winds of electrified gas rip through the solar atmosphere at nearly the speed of sound there, according to new observations from NASA's Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) spacecraft and the European Space Agency/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft.[6]

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