The Sun Today, l'attività solare non influisce sui terremoti

Una delle teorie cospirazioniste più popolari riguarda la possibilità di scatenare devastanti terremoti intervenendo sulla "cavità" (un importante concetto nella fisica delle radiazioni) tra ionosfera e suolo con bombardamenti elettromagnetici a frequenze estremamente basse. Nel mirino dei complottisti c'è per esempio l'impianto HAARP che in Alaska effettua una serie di sperimentazioni sullo strato di plasma atmosferico, anche - a quanto si sa - con scopi militari, per studiare tecniche di "potenziamento" delle radiocomunicazioni. Analizzando la questione con un minimo di buon senso è facile rendersi conto che la semplice correlazione tra attività sismica e i cosiddetti "precursori" osservati nelle bande RF a bassa frequenza non può autorizzarci a pensare che valga anche la correlazione inversa. Se enormi masse di terreno possono provocare perturbazioni nel campo elettromagnetico, il fenomeno contrario appare francamente improponibile: non posso perturbare il campo e ottenere dei terremoti.

Il sito The Sun Today, curato da alcuni ricercatori della NASA, ha pubblicato recentemente un articolo che nega ogni correlazione tra terremoti e brillamenti solari. L'attività sul nostro astro è ovviamente legata a quello che succede nella ionosfera, ma i grafici pubblicati da The Sun Today dimostrano oltre ogni dubbio che le curve sono del tutto indipendenti, il sole "brilla" per conto suo e al massimo, oltre a condizionare la propagazione dei segnali radio e a influire negativamente sui satelliti artificiali e persino sulle reti dell'alta tensione, può scatenare il suggestivo fenomeno delle aurore boreali e australi. Che per fortuna non fa alcuna vittima.

First let us pose the science question we wish to answer: do solar flares cause earthquakes? Note that this is more specific than asking ‘is there a relationship between solar activity and earthquakes?’. First of all, solar activity can mean flares, or coronal mass ejections, or bursts of solar wind. Here I will focus only on flares, but do bear in mind that flares and CMEs often occur in tandem. Secondly, we are asking if flares CAUSE earthquakes; not whether a LACK of flares cause earthquakes. If flares do indeed cause earthquakes then we would expect to see a positive correlation between flares occurring and earthquakes occurring. If a lack of flares cause earthquakes, then we would expect a negative (or anti-) correlation.

For this experiment I have downloaded data from all known earthquakes from 1980 to the present day. This data is publicly available from the United States Geological Survey website (USGS). Here I must point out that I am not a seismologist – I have merely gathered together the dates and magnitudes of all known earthquakes greater than 4 on the Richter scale from the past 30 years. A list of all the solar flares from the last 30 years is also available from NOAA’s National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC). Below is the plot I made which shows the occurrence rate of both solar flares (in blue) and earthquakes (in red). (Anyone with a basic understanding of Excel, a little curiosity, and a bit of patience, can try this for themselves.) You can see that solar flares come and go with each solar cycle (approximately every 11 years), whereas earthquakes appear to occur continuously, with no obvious pattern.

NASA: il primo film della massa espulsa dal sole

Oggi la NASA ha tenuto una conferenza stampa per presentare i risultati di un lungo lavoro di analisi dei dati trasmessi dalla coppia di sonde orbitanti della missione STEREO, incaricata di studiare fenomeni dalla complessa dinamica come le eiezioni di massa coronale dal sole. Alcuni giornali importanti (per esempio il Daily Mail), forse riprendendo le agenzie, non hanno capito nulla e hanno pubblicato titoli allarmistici sull'arrivo di una devastante tempesta solare sul nostro pianeta. Il quotidiano britannico arriva a dire che la conferenza stampa della NASA è stata organizzata proprio per contribuire a fare fronto contro questa emergenza. In realtà i fenomeni descritti in questo filmato:

risalgono al 2008 e hanno appunto richiesto un lungo studio.

Sul sito di SpaceWeather.com è disponibile un filmato Quicktime ancora più dettagliato. Secondo gli scienziati è la prima volta che, grazie alla particolare prospettiva dovuta alla posizione delle sonde STEREO nella loro orbita, è possibile correlare anche visivamente il momento dell'espulsione della massa solare con l'arrivo del plasma qui a terra. Finora ci siamo dovuti accontentare di una visuale per così dire "frontale" che non consente di capire come il plasma evolve e cambia forma mentre viene catapultato fuori dalla fornace del sole. Quando arriva ai limiti del sistema solare il volume di questa massa può essere aumentato di dieci milioni di volte. Informazioni come queste possono aiutarci a prevenire gli effetti più devastanti di eventi che possono influire pesantemente, qui sulla terra, sulle linee dell'alta tensione, i satelliti e le radiocomunicazioni.

Spacecraft Sees Solar Storm Engulf Earth

August 18, 2011: For the first time, a spacecraft far from Earth has turned and watched a solar storm engulf our planet. The movie, released today during a NASA press conference, has galvanized solar physicists, who say it could lead to important advances in space weather forecasting.

“The movie sent chills down my spine,” says Craig DeForest of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "It shows a CME swelling into an enormous wall of plasma and then washing over the tiny blue speck of Earth where we live. I felt very small.”

CMEs are billion-ton clouds of solar plasma launched by the same explosions that spark solar flares. When they sweep past our planet, they can cause auroras, radiation storms, and in extreme cases power outages. Tracking these clouds and predicting their arrival is an important part of space weather forecasting.

“We have seen CMEs before, but never quite like this,” says Lika Guhathakurta, program scientist for the STEREO mission at NASA headquarters. “STEREO-A has given us a new view of solar storms.”

STEREO-A is one of two spacecraft launched in 2006 to observe solar activity from widely-spaced locations. At the time of the storm, STEREO-A was more than 65 million miles from Earth, giving it the “big picture” view other spacecraft in Earth orbit have been missing.

When CMEs first leave the sun, they are bright and easy to see. Visibility is quickly reduced, however, as the clouds expand into the void. By the time a typical CME crosses the orbit of Venus, it is a billion times fainter than the surface of the full Moon, and more than a thousand times fainter than the Milky Way. CMEs that reach Earth are almost as gossamer as vacuum itself and correspondingly transparent.

“Pulling these faint clouds out of the confusion of starlight and interplanetary dust has been an enormous challenge,” says DeForest.

Indeed, it took almost three years for his team to learn how to do it. Footage of the storm released today was recorded back in December 2008, and they have been working on it ever since. Now that the technique has been perfected, it can be applied on a regular basis without such a long delay.

Alysha Reinard of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center explains the benefits for space weather forecasting:

“Until quite recently, spacecraft could see CMEs only when they were still quite close to the sun. By calculating a CME's speed during this brief period, we were able to estimate when it would reach Earth. After the first few hours, however, the CME would leave this field of view and after that we were 'in the dark' about its progress.”

“The ability to track a cloud continuously from the Sun to Earth is a big improvement,” she continues. “In the past, our very best predictions of CME arrival times had uncertainties of plus or minus 4 hours,” she continues. “The kind of movies we’ve seen today could significantly reduce the error bars.”

The movies pinpoint not only the arrival time of the CME, but also its mass. From the brightness of the cloud, researchers can calculate the gas density with impressive precision. Their results for the Dec. 2008 event agreed with actual in situ measurements at the few percent level. When this technique is applied to future storms, forecasters will be able to estimate its impact with greater confidence.

At the press conference, DeForest pointed out some of the movie’s highlights: When the CME first left the sun, it was cavernous, with walls of magnetism encircling a cloud of low-density gas. As the CME crossed the Sun-Earth divide, however, its shape changed. The CME “snow-plowed” through the solar wind, scooping up material to form a towering wall of plasma. By the time the CME reached Earth, its forward wall was sagging inward under the weight of accumulated gas.

The kind of magnetic transformations revealed by the movie deeply impressed Guhathakurta: “I have always thought that in heliophysics understanding the magnetic field is equivalent to the ‘dark energy’ problem of astrophysics. Often, we cannot see the magnetic field, yet it orchestrates almost everything. These images from STEREO give us a real sense of what the underlying magnetic field is doing.”

All of the speakers at today’s press event stressed that the images go beyond the understanding of a single event. The inner physics of CMEs have been laid bare for the first time—a development that will profoundly shape theoretical models and computer-generated forecasts of CMEs for many years to come.

“This is what the STEREO mission was launched to do,” concludes Guhathakurta, “and it is terrific to see it live up to that promise.

Ascolti dopo il brillamento solare

Questa notte da Favignana ho trascorso un po' di tempo a monitorare la situazione in onde medie e corte, cercando i segni della situazione aurorale determinata dal brillamento della mattinata scorsa (che ha anche provocato un piccolo "proton event"). Continua a sorprendermi il comportamento del Tecsun PL660, che è riuscito a tirar fuori dell'audio abbastanza netto dall'Argentina su 1030 kHz con la sua sola antenna in ferrite (le portanti sudamericane erano molto numerose, oltre all'audio percepibile di Globo su 1220 kHz). La registrazione qui acclusa è dedicata a Christian Diemoz, che un mese fa mi ha inviato un suo clip con la registrazione di un tentativo di KJES, elusiva emittente americana religiosa, che trasmette da parecchi anni dal Nuovo Messico. La frequenza è di 7555 kHz (distrubata da un segnale digitale probabilmente militare) intorno alle 02.30 UTC, orario di chiusura di quello che in teoria dovrebbe essere un programma in inglese che invece è spagnolissimo. Non ci sono identificazioni esplicite, ma alla fine della canzone, dopo alcuni minuti di recitazione di gruppo (un marchio di fabbrica di KJES che è atipicamente di matrice cattolica), si può percepire abbastanza chiaramente la vocina in spagnolo che annuncia "trasmitiendo desde... Nuevo Mexico, Estados Unidos de America, 8 8 0 7 2", lo zip code di Vado, località dove è situato il trasmettitore. Non ci sono differenze particolari di livello con il segnale ricevuto da Chris in Val d'Aosta, io forse ho avuto per qualche minuto una maggiore stabilità.

Kjes10 08 11 0230 by lawendel

Sole, l'eruzione magnetica è globale

Il primo di agosto di quest'anno si è verificata una eruzione solare che con l'aiuto dei dati raccolti dalla missione Solar Dynamics Observatory e dalle sonde gemelle della missione STEREO, è stata classificata tra le più peculiari finora registrate dall'uomo. Diversamente dalle teorie che volevano questi fenomeni abbastanza confinati a vaste ma limitate aree di attività della corona solare, l'eruzione agostana ha coinvolto l'intero emisfero visibile del sole. Una globalità del fenomeno che ha suggerito agli scienziati nuove modalità di analisi "olistica", che dovrebbe portare a migliori chances predittive e quindi a un maggior livello di preparazione in diversi ambiti della vita terrestre, come le centrali elettriche o il volo civile ad alte quote.

Global Eruption Rocks the Sun

12.13.10

Dr. Tony Phillips

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

On August 1, 2010, an entire hemisphere of the sun erupted. Filaments of magnetism snapped and exploded, shock waves raced across the stellar surface, billion-ton clouds of hot gas billowed into space. Astronomers knew they had witnessed something big. It was so big, it may have shattered old ideas about solar activity. "The August 1st event really opened our eyes," says Karel Schrijver of Lockheed Martin’s Solar and Astrophysics Lab in Palo Alto, CA. "We see that solar storms can be global events, playing out on scales we scarcely imagined before."

For the past three months, Schrijver has been working with fellow Lockheed-Martin solar physicist Alan Title to understand what happened during the "Great Eruption." They had plenty of data: The event was recorded in unprecedented detail by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and twin STEREO spacecraft. With several colleagues present to offer commentary, they outlined their findings at a press conference today at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Explosions on the sun are not localized or isolated events, they announced. Instead, solar activity is interconnected by magnetism over breathtaking distances. Solar flares, tsunamis, coronal mass ejections--they can go off all at once, hundreds of thousands of miles apart, in a dizzyingly-complex concert of violence. "To predict eruptions we can no longer focus on the magnetic fields of isolated active regions," says Title, "we have to know the surface magnetic field of practically the entire sun." This revelation increases the work load for space weather forecasters, but it also increases the potential accuracy of their forecasts.

"The whole-sun approach could lead to breakthroughs in predicting solar activity," commented Rodney Viereck of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, CO. "This in turn would provide improved forecasts to our customers such as electric power grid operators and commercial airlines, who could take action to protect their systems and ensure the safety of passengers and crew."

In a paper they prepared for the Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR), Schrijver and Title broke down the Great Eruption into more than a dozen significant shock waves, flares, filament eruptions, and CMEs spanning 180 degrees of solar longitude and 28 hours of time. At first it seemed to be a cacophony of disorder until they plotted the events on a map of the sun's magnetic field.

Title describes the Eureka! moment: "We saw that all the events of substantial coronal activity were connected by a wide-ranging system of separatrices, separators, and quasi-separatrix layers." A "separatrix" is a magnetic fault zone where small changes in surrounding plasma currents can set off big electromagnetic storms.

Researchers have long suspected this kind of magnetic connection was possible. "The notion of 'sympathetic' flares goes back at least three quarters of a century," they wrote in their JGR paper. Sometimes observers would see flares going off one after another--like popcorn--but it was impossible to prove a link between them. Arguments in favor of cause and effect were statistical and often full of doubt. "For this kind of work, SDO and STEREO are game-changers," says Lika Guhathakurta, NASA's Living with a Star Program Scientist. "Together, the three spacecraft monitor 97% of the sun, allowing researchers to see connections that they could only guess at in the past."

To wit, barely two-thirds of the August event was visible from Earth, yet all of it could be seen by the SDO-STEREO fleet. Moreover, SDO's measurements of the sun's magnetic field revealed direct connections between the various components of the Great Eruption—no statistics required.

Much remains to be done. "We're still sorting out cause and effect," says Schrijver. "Was the event one big chain reaction, in which one eruption triggered another--bang, bang, bang!--in sequence? Or did everything go off together as a consequence of some greater change in the sun's global magnetic field?"

Further analysis may yet reveal the underlying trigger; for now, the team is still wrapping their minds around the global character of solar activity. One commentator recalled the old adage of three blind men describing an elephant--one by feeling the trunk, one by holding the tail, and another by sniffing a toenail. Studying the sun one sunspot at a time may be just as limiting. "Not all eruptions are going to be global," notes Guhathakurta. "But the global character of solar activity can no longer be ignored."

As if the sun wasn't big enough already….

La strana relazione tra neutrini solari e radioattività

Me ne sono accorto solo ora ma la storia pubblicata dallo Stanford Report mi sembra bellissima. Un gruppo di scienziati della Purdue University, interessata a servirsi del decadimento dei nuclei radioattivi per generare numeri casuali per applicazioni matematiche, scopre che contrariamente agli andamenti teorici questo decadimento - che dovrebbe essere costante - rivela inspiegabili tracciati di irregolarità. Confrontando i loro dati con quelli misurati presso altri istituti in America e in Germania i ricercatori fanno una scoperta ancora più sorprendente. Le variazioni subite dai tassi di decadimento teorici ha un andamento stagionale, sono diversi in inverno e in estate.

Convinti a questo punto che qualcosa stava succedendo ma non riuscendo a escludere possibili errori strumentali, gli scienziati continuano a misurare finche nel dicembre del 2006, proprio in corrispondenza di un forte brillamento solare, l'ingegnere nucleare Jere Jenkins trova una precisa correlazione tra le variazioni misurate per il manganese-57 un isotopo per applicazioni mediche e la grande esplosione avvenuta sul sole. Non solo, il rallentamento del decadimento ha inizio addirittura un giono e mezzo prima. Ma come è possibile per un brillamento influenzare la radioattività di elementi posti alla distanza terra-sole? L'unica risposta, affermano gli scienziati, è che in qualche modo i neutrini del sole, quelle particelle ultra-elusive che stiamo cercanod di rilevare nel Gran Sasso, devono essere legati al decadimento misurato sul pianeta terra. Ancora nessuno sa dire quale possa essere questo modo. Mistero nel mistero, la ciclicità della variazione ha un andamento di circa 33 giorni, contro i 28 del sole. Ma perché? Anche qui c'è per il momento una sola spiegazione possibile: il nucleo centrale del sole ruota più lentamente del resto e i nutrini vengono da lì. Ora gli scienziati sembrano disporre di un metodo predittivo di fenomeni che possono influire pesantemente sull'esplorazione spaziale e il funzionamento dei satelliti. Ma soprattutto si trovano davanti a un meccanismo di causa effetto che - se confermato - potrebbe aprirci nuove prospettive nel nostro studio della materia.

Stanford Report, August 23, 2010

The strange case of solar flares and radioactive elements

When researchers found an unusual linkage between solar flares and the inner life of radioactive elements on Earth, it touched off a scientific detective investigation that could end up protecting the lives of space-walking astronauts and maybe rewriting some of the assumptions of physics.

BY DAN STOBER

It's a mystery that presented itself unexpectedly: The radioactive decay of some elements sitting quietly in laboratories on Earth seemed to be influenced by activities inside the sun, 93 million miles away. Is this possible?

Researchers from Stanford and Purdue University believe it is. But their explanation of how it happens opens the door to yet another mystery.

There is even an outside chance that this unexpected effect is brought about by a previously unknown particle emitted by the sun. "That would be truly remarkable," said Peter Sturrock, Stanford professor emeritus of applied physics and an expert on the inner workings of the sun.

The story begins, in a sense, in classrooms around the world, where students are taught that the rate of decay of a specific radioactive material is a constant. This concept is relied upon, for example, when anthropologists use carbon-14 to date ancient artifacts and when doctors determine the proper dose of radioactivity to treat a cancer patient.

Random numbers

But that assumption was challenged in an unexpected way by a group of researchers from Purdue University who at the time were more interested in random numbers than nuclear decay. (Scientists use long strings of random numbers for a variety of calculations, but they are difficult to produce, since the process used to produce the numbers has an influence on the outcome.)

Ephraim Fischbach, a physics professor at Purdue, was looking into the rate of radioactive decay of several isotopes as a possible source of random numbers generated without any human input. (A lump of radioactive cesium-137, for example, may decay at a steady rate overall, but individual atoms within the lump will decay in an unpredictable, random pattern. Thus the timing of the random ticks of a Geiger counter placed near the cesium might be used to generate random numbers.)

As the researchers pored through published data on specific isotopes, they found disagreement in the measured decay rates – odd for supposed physical constants.

Checking data collected at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island and the Federal Physical and Technical Institute in Germany, they came across something even more surprising: long-term observation of the decay rate of silicon-32 and radium-226 seemed to show a small seasonal variation. The decay rate was ever so slightly faster in winter than in summer.

Was this fluctuation real, or was it merely a glitch in the equipment used to measure the decay, induced by the change of seasons, with the accompanying changes in temperature and humidity?

"Everyone thought it must be due to experimental mistakes, because we're all brought up to believe that decay rates are constant," Sturrock said.

The sun speaks

On Dec 13, 2006, the sun itself provided a crucial clue, when a solar flare sent a stream of particles and radiation toward Earth. Purdue nuclear engineer Jere Jenkins, while measuring the decay rate of manganese-54, a short-lived isotope used in medical diagnostics, noticed that the rate dropped slightly during the flare, a decrease that started about a day and a half before the flare.

If this apparent relationship between flares and decay rates proves true, it could lead to a method of predicting solar flares prior to their occurrence, which could help prevent damage to satellites and electric grids, as well as save the lives of astronauts in space.

The decay-rate aberrations that Jenkins noticed occurred during the middle of the night in Indiana – meaning that something produced by the sun had traveled all the way through the Earth to reach Jenkins' detectors. What could the flare send forth that could have such an effect?

Jenkins and Fischbach guessed that the culprits in this bit of decay-rate mischief were probably solar neutrinos, the almost weightless particles famous for flying at almost the speed of light through the physical world – humans, rocks, oceans or planets – with virtually no interaction with anything.

Then, in a series of papers published in Astroparticle Physics, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research and Space Science Reviews, Jenkins, Fischbach and their colleagues showed that the observed variations in decay rates were highly unlikely to have come from environmental influences on the detection systems.

Reason for suspicion

Their findings strengthened the argument that the strange swings in decay rates were caused by neutrinos from the sun. The swings seemed to be in synch with the Earth's elliptical orbit, with the decay rates oscillating as the Earth came closer to the sun (where it would be exposed to more neutrinos) and then moving away.

So there was good reason to suspect the sun, but could it be proved?

Enter Peter Sturrock, Stanford professor emeritus of applied physics and an expert on the inner workings of the sun. While on a visit to the National Solar Observatory in Arizona, Sturrock was handed copies of the scientific journal articles written by the Purdue researchers.

Sturrock knew from long experience that the intensity of the barrage of neutrinos the sun continuously sends racing toward Earth varies on a regular basis as the sun itself revolves and shows a different face, like a slower version of the revolving light on a police car. His advice to Purdue: Look for evidence that the changes in radioactive decay on Earth vary with the rotation of the sun. "That's what I suggested. And that's what we have done."

A surprise

Going back to take another look at the decay data from the Brookhaven lab, the researchers found a recurring pattern of 33 days. It was a bit of a surprise, given that most solar observations show a pattern of about 28 days – the rotation rate of the surface of the sun.

The explanation? The core of the sun – where nuclear reactions produce neutrinos – apparently spins more slowly than the surface we see. "It may seem counter-intuitive, but it looks as if the core rotates more slowly than the rest of the sun," Sturrock said.

All of the evidence points toward a conclusion that the sun is "communicating" with radioactive isotopes on Earth, said Fischbach.

But there's one rather large question left unanswered. No one knows how neutrinos could interact with radioactive materials to change their rate of decay.

"It doesn't make sense according to conventional ideas," Fischbach said. Jenkins whimsically added, "What we're suggesting is that something that doesn't really interact with anything is changing something that can't be changed."

"It's an effect that no one yet understands," agreed Sturrock. "Theorists are starting to say, 'What's going on?' But that's what the evidence points to. It's a challenge for the physicists and a challenge for the solar people too."

If the mystery particle is not a neutrino, "It would have to be something we don't know about, an unknown particle that is also emitted by the sun and has this effect, and that would be even more remarkable," Sturrock said.

Proiettili di plasma dal sole

La macchia solare 1105 ha prodotto uno spettacolare brillamento ripreso dal Solar Dynamics Observatory ieri, 8 settembre. Il filmato è davvero impressionante. Per fortuna l'eruzione di plasma non era diretta verso la terra, altrimenti avremmo subito un bel colpo di frusta. Sono comunque apparse intense aurore boreali al nord. Il sole sta gradualmente riprendendo la sua attività, anche se ultimamente il periodo ha continuato a essere caratterizzato dall'assenza di macchie che è stato il segno distintivo dell'ultimo, prolungatissimo minimo.

Dinamica solare in HD: piccole variazioni, grandi effetti

Continuano ad arrivare copiosi i risultati delle osservazioni del Solar Dynamics Observatory. Questa volta il protagonista è l'Atmospheric Imaging Assembly, uno dei tre strumenti a bordo del satellite SDO. Consente una visuale ad alta risoluzione e su un amplissima gamma di temperature della corona solare.

Dalle prime immagini gli scienziati riescono a capire meglio perché una variazione su minuscola scala sul Sole finisca per avere enormi ripercussioni anche sul nostro pianeta, dove le perturbazioni solari si fanno sentire sui cavi dell'alta tensione e sui sistemi di comunicazione satellitare. A corredo dell'articolo che segue, trovate una quantita di immagini, filmati e presentazioni a questo indirizzo.

La presentazione sull'AIA la potete trovare qui, in Pdf, mentre qui trovate un incredibile database di eventi solari, l'interfaccia di ricerca SolSearch che estrae i dati dalla Heliophysics Events Knowledgebase (HEK), uno dei servizi del Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory della Lockheed Martin.

Spacecraft Reveals Small Solar Events Have Large Scale Effects

05.25.10

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, has allowed scientists for the first time to comprehensively view the dynamic nature of storms on the sun. Solar storms have been recognized as a cause of technological problems on Earth since the invention of the telegraph in the 19th century.

The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), one of three instruments aboard SDO, allowed scientists to discover that even minor solar events are never truly small scale. Shortly after AIA opened its doors on March 30, scientists observed a large eruptive prominence on the sun's edge, followed by a filament eruption a third of the way across the star's disk from the eruption.

"Even small events restructure large regions of the solar surface," said Alan Title, AIA principal investigator at Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, Calif. "It's been possible to recognize the size of these regions because of the combination of spatial, temporal and area coverage provided by AIA."

The AIA instrument also has observed a number of very small flares that have generated magnetic instabilities and waves with clearly-observed effects over a substantial fraction of the solar surface. The instrument is capturing full-disk images in eight different temperature bands that span 10,000 to 36-million degrees Fahrenheit. This allows scientists to observe entire events that are very difficult to discern by looking in a single temperature band, at a slower rate, or over a more limited field of view.

The data from SDO is providing a torrent of new information and spectacular images to be studied and interpreted. Using AIA's high-resolution and nearly continuous full-disk images of the sun, scientists have a better understanding of how even small events on our nearest star can significantly impact technological infrastructure on Earth.

Solar storms produce disturbances in electromagnetic fields that can induce large currents in wires, disrupting power lines and causing widespread blackouts. The storms can interfere with global positioning systems, cable television, and communications between ground controllers and satellites and airplane pilots flying near Earth's poles. Radio noise from solar storms also can disrupt cell phone service.

Launched in Feb. 2010, the spacecraft's commissioning May 14 confirmed all three of its instruments successfully passed an on-orbit checkout, were calibrated and are collecting science data.

"We're already at five million images and counting," said Dean Pesnell, the SDO project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "With data and images pouring in from SDO, solar scientists are poised to make discoveries that will rewrite the books on how changes in solar activity have a direct effect on Earth. The observatory is working great, and it's just going to get better."

Goddard built, operates and manages the SDO spacecraft for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. SDO is the first mission of NASA's Living with a Star Program. The program's goal is to develop the scientific understanding necessary to address those aspects of the sun-Earth system that directly affect our lives and society.

Solar Dynamics Observatory, il sole in hi-res

Pubblico da quasi cinque anni le notizie - e le immagini - relative alle ricerche nel campo della fisica solare e della sua interazione con il sistema terrestre (una interazione che abbraccia anche aspetti profondamente sociali), ma quello che comincia ad arrivare dal Solar Dynamics Observatory lanciato a febbraio dalla NASA è davvero stupefacente. Le immagini viste sono solo una frazione minima degli 1,5 terabyte di informazione giornaliera che SDO rimanda a terra. Oggi l'apertura di Repubblica.it contiene un link a una "foto navigabile" di una atmosefera solare restituita a una risoluzione mai vista, ma altre immagini e filmati raccontano episodi recenti come il brillamento del 30 marzo scorso e tanti altri. Persino l'Huffington Post ha dedicato spazio all'eruzione del 13 aprile, facendo vedere un filmato HD a dir poco spettacolare (immagini riprese in quel caso dalla missione STEREO. Nel frattempo, anche il telescopio spaziale Hubble festeggia in questi giorni il suo ventesimo compleanno.

NASA's New Eye on the Sun Delivers Stunning First Images

04.21.10

NASA's recently launched Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, is returning early images that confirm an unprecedented new capability for scientists to better understand our sun’s dynamic processes. These solar activities affect everything on Earth.

Some of the images from the spacecraft show never-before-seen detail of material streaming outward and away from sunspots. Others show extreme close-ups of activity on the sun’s surface. The spacecraft also has made the first high-resolution measurements of solar flares in a broad range of extreme ultraviolet wavelengths.

"These initial images show a dynamic sun that I had never seen in more than 40 years of solar research,” said Richard Fisher, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "SDO will change our understanding of the sun and its processes, which affect our lives and society. This mission will have a huge impact on science, similar to the impact of the Hubble Space Telescope on modern astrophysics.”

Launched on Feb. 11, 2010, SDO is the most advanced spacecraft ever designed to study the sun. During its five-year mission, it will examine the sun's magnetic field and also provide a better understanding of the role the sun plays in Earth's atmospheric chemistry and climate. Since launch, engineers have been conducting testing and verification of the spacecraft’s components. Now fully operational, SDO will provide images with clarity 10 times better than high-definition television and will return more comprehensive science data faster than any other solar observing spacecraft.

SDO will determine how the sun's magnetic field is generated, structured and converted into violent solar events such as turbulent solar wind, solar flares and coronal mass ejections. These immense clouds of material, when directed toward Earth, can cause large magnetic storms in our planet’s magnetosphere and upper atmosphere.

SDO will provide critical data that will improve the ability to predict these space weather events. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., built, operates and manages the SDO spacecraft for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

“I’m so proud of our brilliant work force at Goddard, which is rewriting science textbooks once again.” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittee that funds NASA. “This time Goddard is shedding new light on our closest star, the sun, discovering new information about powerful solar flares that affect us here on Earth by damaging communication satellites and temporarily knocking out power grids. Better data means more accurate solar storm warnings.”

Space weather has been recognized as a cause of technological problems since the invention of the telegraph in the 19th century. These events produce disturbances in electromagnetic fields on Earth that can induce extreme currents in wires, disrupting power lines and causing widespread blackouts. These solar storms can interfere with communications between ground controllers, satellites and airplane pilots flying near Earth's poles. Radio noise from the storm also can disrupt cell phone service.

SDO will send 1.5 terabytes of data back to Earth each day, which is equivalent to a daily download of half a million songs onto an MP3 player. The observatory carries three state-of the-art instruments for conducting solar research.

The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager maps solar magnetic fields and looks beneath the sun’s opaque surface. The experiment will decipher the physics of the sun’s activity, taking pictures in several very narrow bands of visible light. Scientists will be able to make ultrasound images of the sun and study active regions in a way similar to watching sand shift in a desert dune. The instrument’s principal investigator is Phil Scherrer of Stanford University. HMI was built by a collaboration of Stanford University and the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif.

The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly is a group of four telescopes designed to photograph the sun’s surface and atmosphere. The instrument covers 10 different wavelength bands, or colors, selected to reveal key aspects of solar activity. These types of images will show details never seen before by scientists. The principal investigator is Alan Title of the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory, which built the instrument.

The Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment measures fluctuations in the sun’s radiant emissions. These emissions have a direct and powerful effect on Earth’s upper atmosphere -- heating it, puffing it up, and breaking apart atoms and molecules. Researchers don’t know how fast the sun can vary at many of these wavelengths, so they expect to make discoveries about flare events. The principal investigator is Tom Woods of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. LASP built the instrument.

"These amazing images, which show our dynamic sun in a new level of detail, are only the beginning of SDO's contribution to our understanding of the sun," said SDO Project Scientist Dean Pesnell of Goddard.

SDO is the first mission of NASA's Living with a Star Program, or LWS, and the crown jewel in a fleet of NASA missions that study our sun and space environment. The goal of LWS is to develop the scientific understanding necessary to address those aspects of the connected sun-Earth system that directly affect our lives and society.

Un sole a bassa energia potrebbe essere normale

Ho scoperto grazie a una delle tante mailing list che frequento un'altra interessante fonte di informazione sull'attività solare e sulle teorie legate ai suoi meccanismi più attivi, dai brillamenti (flares) alle eiezioni di massa coronale. Si tratta del wiki curato dal team di ricercatori di RHESSI la missione satellitare lanciata nel 2002 per studiare spettroscopicamente i fenomeni solari ad alta energia.
Leif Svalgaard e Hugh Hudson si chiedono se non sia il caso, per chi studia questi fenomeni, di cominciare a preoccuparsi visto che il prolungato minimo solare ha drasticamente ridotto il numero di brillamenti da un sole caratterizzato da lunghi periodi senza macchie. Non solo, anche il flusso alla lunghezza d'onda di 10,7 centimetri appare in costante calo, segno di un abbassamento di quella che potremmo definire attività corrente del sole. La conclusione, dicono i ricercatori, è che no, non è ancora il caso di spaventarsi, perché abbiamo ampia evidenza storica di un sole ancora meno attivo di così. Semmai sono stati gli ultimi cicli, quelli immediatamente precedenti il numero 24 a essere stati particolarmente agitati. La transizione tra l'ultimi ciclo e l'attuale appena iniziato ricorderebbe condizioni riscontrate poco più di un secolo fa, nel passaggio dal ciclo 13 al 14. Naturalmente i dati raccolti allora erano diversi e non prevedevano misurazioni del flusso a 10,7 centimetri.
L'indirizzo del wiki è questo (per leggere gli articoli cliccare su "nuggets"). La pagina del RHESSI dell'Università di California a Berkeley si aggiunge a quella del Goddard Space Center della NASA dove si trovano molti dati raccolti dalla sonda.

Cycle 24 - don't panic yet!
From RHESSI Wiki

Published: 13 April 2009
Leif Svalgaard and Hugh Hudson

We're in an extended period of minimal solar activity (see Nugget 91 for a previous look at this issue). Without flares, RHESSI is missing its most important observational work, and there has not been even a C-class flare yet this year. Will sunspots and flares ever return? How unusual is this behavior? In this Nugget we conclude that it is too soon to panic, but that certainly we're seeing an interesting diminished level of activity -a level most of us have not seen before.
The 10-cm radio flux from the Sun, with its daily index F10.7, is one of the basic standard tools for gauging the level of solar activity. This index has been generated in an unbroken string since 1947. It is derived from careful radio flux measurements made in Canada and pioneered by the early radio astronomer A.E. Covington.
The figure on the left might give cause for alarm if one is interested in observations of solar flares. It shows (red line) the variation of F10.7 monthly means for the two years prior to the present time. The black line shows the mean of the four previous cycles, registered by summed epoch analysis on simple Gaussian fits to their preceding maxima as references. The four time series from prior maxima from are averaged, using the Gaussian peak time as a reference, month by month; the range bars show the standard deviations of these means for each month. This procedure does not allow for the possibility of different cycle durations, something that seems fairly obvious from the sunspot record, but it is hard to be quantitative about this. Our approach here is to use the most direct approach to analysis of the most objective of the indices, and Figure 1 is the result. If one interprets the range bars as true error bars, and did not know (or believe) that cycles could have different lengths, this figure would provide compelling evidence that Cycle 24 is special, and that it might be time for fans of solar flares to "panic." Our discussion below, however, shows that this would be premature.
A closer look (Figure 2 below) shows the daily values of three indices: F10.7, the total solar irradiance TSI, and the classical sunspot number. There is a clear apperance of an up-turn in the least "noisy" of these indices, F10.7, although there are other small variations that we do not understand well. But probably F10.7 is giving us an early warning about the sudden increase of Cycle 24 spots. These should appear within the next few weeks or months, though, so please check the daily updates of the indices on our Web page.
In Figure 3 we do a comparison of the contributions of old- and new-cycle activity to the minimum periods between Cycles 21/22, 22/23, and 23/24 (the present one). These are counts of 'region days' per month (normalized to 30 days), defined as the number of days when an active region (one with a NOAA number) was visible within 70 degrees of central meridian, and then summed for every region. Different cycles (as determined from the magnetic polarity of the spots) are coded with a different color. Yearly smoothed counts are shown as the 'smoother' curves. The detailed bottom three panels show blown-up views of the transitions between cycles. Note that the 23/24 transition is indeed diffferent, and that Cycle 24 has just barely begun (see also the weak increase in F10.7 visible in Figure 2).
Although this transition may look unusual to us, for the Sun it may just be business as usual. The current transition looks very much like the one between cycles 13 and 14, 107 years ago. Not only were the sunspot numbers (or 'region counts') very similar, but the heliospheric magnetic field back then behaved very similarly to what we observe today, as seen in Figure 4.
In summary it is probably too soon to panic. In the modern era (Figure 1) there is no precedent for such a protracted activity minimum, but there are historical records from a century ago of a similar pattern. We do expect activity to pick up fairly suddenly soon. In the meanwhile this is a good opportunity to use the excellent new data available from many satellites and ground-based observatories without interference from new flux emergence. We can hope to learn a great deal about how low-level activity works in the network and in the polar caps.

1859, l'aurora boreale arriva a Kingston, Jamaica

Il primo settembre del 1859 l'astronomo inglese Richard Carrington stava studiando con l'aiuto del suo telescopio un imponente gruppo di macchie solare quando sulla superficie dell'astro cominciarono a formarsi due strane macchie bianche. Ancora più bianche della luce solare. Era l'inizio del "brillamento di Carrington", un'esplosione magnetica di inusitata potenza. Lo studio dei ghiacci perenni dell'Antartide permette di classificare il Carrington flare come il più intenso degli ultimi 500 anni. Quella stessa sera, dopo il tramonto, il cielo del mondo si illuminò come un lampione. L'aurora boreale venne osservata in Jamaica, a Cuba, alle Hawaii e sembra che alle latitudini più settentrionali la luminosità fosse così intensa da permettere di leggere il giornale. La tempesta elettrica associata al fenomeno mandò in tilt la giovane rete telegrafica mondiale. I rotoli di carta degli apparecchi presero fuoco, gli operatori riuscivano a trasmettere i messaggi anche dopo aver staccato le batterie che alimentavano le linee.
Raramente una storia letta sul sito che la NASA dedica allo space weather, al tempo geomagnetico, mi era parsa altrettanto avvincente. Giustamente gli autori si chiedono quale possa essere la probabilità che un Carrington flare si verifichi ancora (statisticamente sappiamo che potrebbe verificarsi tra 350 anni, ma anche in coincidenza col prossimo massimo solare). E quali potrebbero essere le conseguenze oggi, visto che non c'è solo il telegrafo in gioco. Secondo alcune stime, solo per i 900 satelliti e rotti in orbita potremmo avere danni compresi tra i 30 e i 70 miliardi di dollari, ma dopo il flop del baco del 2000 forse è meglio non sbilanciarsi con previsioni catastrofiche. Quel che è certo è che nel cielo di Milano ormai sarebbe molto difficile osservare un'aurora.

A Super Solar Flare

05.06.2008


At 11:18 AM on the cloudless morning of Thursday, September 1, 1859, 33-year-old Richard Carrington—widely acknowledged to be one of England's foremost solar astronomers—was in his well-appointed private observatory. Just as usual on every sunny day, his telescope was projecting an 11-inch-wide image of the sun on a screen, and Carrington skillfully drew the sunspots he saw.
On that morning, he was capturing the likeness of an enormous group of sunspots. Suddenly, before his eyes, two brilliant beads of blinding white light appeared over the sunspots, intensified rapidly, and became kidney-shaped. Realizing that he was witnessing something unprecedented and "being somewhat flurried by the surprise," Carrington later wrote, "I hastily ran to call someone to witness the exhibition with me. On returning within 60 seconds, I was mortified to find that it was already much changed and enfeebled." He and his witness watched the white spots contract to mere pinpoints and disappear.
It was 11:23 AM. Only five minutes had passed.
Just before dawn the next day, skies all over planet Earth erupted in red, green, and purple auroras so brilliant that newspapers could be read as easily as in daylight. Indeed, stunning auroras pulsated even at near tropical latitudes over Cuba, the Bahamas, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Hawaii.
Even more disconcerting, telegraph systems worldwide went haywire. Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set the telegraph paper on fire. Even when telegraphers disconnected the batteries powering the lines, aurora-induced electric currents in the wires still allowed messages to be transmitted.
"What Carrington saw was a white-light solar flare—a magnetic explosion on the sun," explains David Hathaway, solar physics team lead at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Now we know that solar flares happen frequently, especially during solar sunspot maximum. Most betray their existence by releasing X-rays (recorded by X-ray telescopes in space) and radio noise (recorded by radio telescopes in space and on Earth). In Carrington's day, however, there were no X-ray satellites or radio telescopes. No one knew flares existed until that September morning when one super-flare produced enough light to rival the brightness of the sun itself.
"It's rare that one can actually see the brightening of the solar surface," says Hathaway. "It takes a lot of energy to heat up the surface of the sun!"
The explosion produced not only a surge of visible light but also a mammoth cloud of charged particles and detached magnetic loops—a "CME"—and hurled that cloud directly toward Earth. The next morning when the CME arrived, it crashed into Earth's magnetic field, causing the global bubble of magnetism that surrounds our planet to shake and quiver. Researchers call this a "geomagnetic storm." Rapidly moving fields induced enormous electric currents that surged through telegraph lines and disrupted communications.
"More than 35 years ago, I began drawing the attention of the space physics community to the 1859 flare and its impact on telecommunications," says Louis J. Lanzerotti, retired Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories and current editor of the journal Space Weather. He became aware of the effects of solar geomagnetic storms on terrestrial communications when a huge solar flare on August 4, 1972, knocked out long-distance telephone communication across Illinois. That event, in fact, caused AT&T to redesign its power system for transatlantic cables. A similar flare on March 13, 1989, provoked geomagnetic storms that disrupted electric power transmission from the Hydro Québec generating station in Canada, blacking out most of the province and plunging 6 million people into darkness for 9 hours; aurora-induced power surges even melted power transformers in New Jersey. In December 2005, X-rays from another solar storm disrupted satellite-to-ground communications and Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation signals for about 10 minutes. That may not sound like much, but as Lanzerotti noted, "I would not have wanted to be on a commercial airplane being guided in for a landing by GPS or on a ship being docked by GPS during that 10 minutes."
Another Carrington-class flare would dwarf these events. Fortunately, says Hathaway, they appear to be rare: "In the 160-year record of geomagnetic storms, the Carrington event is the biggest." It's possible to delve back even farther in time by examining arctic ice. "Energetic particles leave a record in nitrates in ice cores," he explains. "Here again the Carrington event sticks out as the biggest in 500 years and nearly twice as big as the runner-up."
These statistics suggest that Carrington flares are once in a half-millennium events. The statistics are far from solid, however, and Hathaway cautions that we don't understand flares well enough to rule out a repeat in our lifetime.

And what then?

Lanzerotti points out that as electronic technologies have become more sophisticated and more embedded into everyday life, they have also become more vulnerable to solar activity. On Earth, power lines and long-distance telephone cables might be affected by auroral currents, as happened in 1989. Radar, cell phone communications, and GPS receivers could be disrupted by solar radio noise. Experts who have studied the question say there is little to be done to protect satellites from a Carrington-class flare. In fact, a recent paper estimates potential damage to the 900-plus satellites currently in orbit could cost between $30 billion and $70 billion. The best solution, they say: have a pipeline of comsats ready for launch.
Humans in space would be in peril, too. Spacewalking astronauts might have only minutes after the first flash of light to find shelter from energetic solar particles following close on the heels of those initial photons. Their spacecraft would probably have adequate shielding; the key would be getting inside in time.
No wonder NASA and other space agencies around the world have made the study and prediction of flares a priority. Right now a fleet of spacecraft is monitoring the sun, gathering data on flares big and small that may eventually reveal what triggers the explosions. SOHO, Hinode, STEREO, ACE and others are already in orbit while new spacecraft such as the Solar Dynamics Observatory are readying for launch.
Research won't prevent another Carrington flare, but it may make the "flurry of surprise" a thing of the past.


Authors: Trudy Bell & Dr. Tony Phillips | Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

more information

Description of a Singular Appearance seen in the Sun on September 1, 1859, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 20, p.13-15 -- the original report by R.C. Carrington

An engaging book on the history of the 1859 Carrington flare and the detective work to sleuth its cause and significance is Stuart Clark's The Sun Kings: The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and the Take of How Modern Astronomy Began (Princeton University Press, 2007).

One recent analysis on the effects of a potential future solar flare of similar magnitude is "The Carrington event: Possible doses to crews in Space from a comparable event," by L. W. Townsend et al., Advances in Space Research 38 (2006): 226–231--one of 16 articles in an entire special issue devoted to the 1859 Carrington flare.

See also "The 1859 Solar–Terrestrial Disturbance and the Current Limits of Extreme Space Weather Activity," by E. W. Cliver and L. Svalgaard, Solar Physics (2004) 224: 407–422 (available at ) and "Forecasting the impact of an 1859-caliber superstorm on geosynchronous Earth-orbiting satellites: Transponder resources," by Sten F. Odenwald and James L. Green, Space Weather (2007) 5: 1-16.

NASA is well aware of radiation hazards in space and taking mitigation measures. A book-length report on a 2005 workshop exploring the subject is Space Radiation Hazards and the Vision for Space Exploration: Report of a Workshop published by the National Research Council in 2006.

Colpi di frusta nella cromosfera

Ce n'è abbastanza per farvi saltare dalla sedia, scrive la NASA a proposito del film di un brillamento solare appena registrato nello spazio dalla sonda giapponese Hinode, già nota come "Hubble solare". La sonda è stata lanciata lo scorso settembre per studiare, con riprese ravvicinate e strumenti, la formazione dei brillamenti. Lo scopo è quello di arrivare a un meccanismo predittivo per un evento, il solar flare appunto, che provoca l'eiezione di una massa di particelle potenzialmente dannose per chi opera nello spazio, dagli astronauti ai componenti del Laboratorio Spaziale. Dati gli effetti di questi eventi sulla magnetosfera e la ionosfera terrestri, delle previsioni attendibili farebbero molto comodo anche agli ascoltatori della radio, per i quali un flare può essere al tempo stesso distruttivo e foriero di particolarissime condizioni propagative.

Proprio oggi sul sito della NASA è stato pubblicato un breve filmato con una spettacolare scena ripresa nella cromosfera solare. Si vede una specie di vortice (magnetico) e un forte colpo di frusta sul lato. E' con questo tipo di osservazioni sulla magnetodinamica dei brillamenti che gli scienziati sperano di ricavare le loro regole predittive. Per chi è abituato a pensare ai flare come a una seccatura, capace di rovinare il gioco della ricezione di stazioni lontane, è una vista che incute parecchio rispetto. Stiamo parlando di aree "limitate" grandi come l'intero pianeta terra. Nessuno, ovviamente, aveva mai "visto" cose del genere.

New Phenomena on the Sun
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/21mar_chromosphere.htm

03.21.2007

March 21, 2007: It's enough to make you leap out of your seat: A magnetic vortex almost as big as Earth races across your computer screen, twisting, turning, finally erupting in a powerful solar flare. Japan's Hinode spacecraft recorded just such a blast on Jan. 12, 2007.
"I managed to stay in my seat," says solar physicist John Davis of the Marshall Space Flight Center, "but just barely."
Davis is NASA's project scientist for Hinode, Japanese for Sunrise. The spacecraft was launched in Sept. 2006 from the Uchinoura Space Center in Japan on a mission to study sunspots and solar flares. Hinode's Solar Optical Telescope, which some astronomers liken to "a Hubble for the Sun," produces crystal-clear images with 0.2 arc-second resolution. (Comparison: 0.2 arc-second is a tiny angle approximately equal to the width of a human hair held about 100 meters away.) "We're getting movies like these all the time now," he says.
This particular movie is visually stunning, but the most amazing thing about it, notes Davis, is where the scene unfolded--in the sun's chromosphere. "We used to think the chromosphere was a fairly uneventful place, but Hinode is shattering those misconceptions."
Chromosphere means "sphere of color." It's the name astronomers of the 19th century gave to a narrow and very red layer of the sun's atmosphere they saw peeking over the edge of the Moon during solar eclipses. The color comes from the chromosphere's abundant hydrogen which emits light at a wavelength of 6563 Angstroms, also known as "hydrogen alpha" light. Hinode's telescope is equipped with filters tuned to this specific color.
The view from space is impressive. Visually, the chromosphere resembles a shag carpet with threads of magnetism jutting up from the floor below. Hinode's movies show the threads swaying back and forth as if blown by a gentle breeze. There is nothing gentle, however, about "spicules" shooting into the chromosphere from the underlying photosphere. "These are jets of gas as big as Texas," says Davis. "They rise and fall on time scales of 10 minutes."
And then there are the explosions. "The fact that Hinode is able to observe solar flares taking place in the chromosphere is very important," he says.
The origin of solar flares is a mystery. Researchers have long known that flares develop from magnetic instabilities near sunspots, but even after centuries of studying sunspots, no one can predict exactly when a flare is about to happen. This is a problem for NASA because astronauts in space are vulnerable to intense radiation and high-energy particles produced by the explosions. An accurate system of forecasting would help explorers stay out of harm's way.
Hinode may be looking right into the genesis zone of flares. If so, "it could teach us how flares work and improve our ability to predict them."
Meanwhile, hang on and enjoy the show.