Biggest solar flare ever observed

The European Space Agency (ESA) has unveiled images of a massive solar flare, filmed by the Solar Orbiter probe.

It is the largest solar prominence ever seen in a single image with the full solar disk. On February 15, the Solar Orbiter probe of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the American Space Agency (Nasa) managed to immortalize a massive solar flare. The phenomenon, which extended “over millions of kilometres”, was photographed 3.5 million kilometers from the device which revolves around the Sun. This relative proximity (the Earth is 150 million kilometers from the Sun) enabled him to produce this particularly detailed image thanks to the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument and its Full Sun Imager (FSI).

Solar prominences are structures that are part of the solar corona, where the temperature exceeds one million degrees. ESA explains that they are “large tangled line-like magnetic field structures that hold dense concentrations of solar plasma suspended above the Sun’s surface, sometimes taking the form of arcing loops.” They are often associated with coronal mass ejections which, if directed at Earth, can wreak havoc on technology and our daily lives.

No danger for Earthlings

This time, no danger for Earthlings, the eruption headed away from our planet. But if so, it would have caused a geomagnetic storm. “Solar particles are electrically charged and would have been trapped by the lines of the Earth’s magnetic field. Given their number and speed, they would probably have caused power outages in regions near the poles, as well as problems on some satellites. said the magazine “Sky and space” .

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Last notable incident, on February 10, when 40 satellites of the SpaceX company disintegrated while re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere . Blame it on a magnetic storm. “These storms warm the atmosphere and increase atmospheric density at our low deployment altitudes,” SpaceX explained, adding that its satellites had been placed in an orbit approaching the Earth at an altitude of 210 km at the closest.

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