Solar Orbiter Probe Captures First-Of-Its-Kind Photo of Billowing Arc of Plasma During Solar Flare [LOOK]

On Feb. 15, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) announced their Solar Orbiter satellite observed a massive solar flare.

ESA announced in a Friday blog that this first-of-its-kind photograph captures the greatest solar prominence explosion ever caught in a single shot alongside the full sun.

Solar Orbiter is a sun-observing spacecraft constructed by the European Space Agency (ESA) with NASA funding.

Solar Orbiter Captures Largest Solar Eruption Yet

Images from the Solar Orbiter and the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (another sun-observing spacecraft) are merged in a photo uploaded on Twitter. It emphasizes the magnitude of the eruption.

The prominence was around 2 million miles (3 million kilometers) in length. That's more than 250 piles of earth stacked on top of each other.

The spacecraft, which is currently close to the Earth-sun line, missed the explosion on the sun's disk. As a result, the prominence must have started on the sun's side that is facing away from us.

A coronal mass ejection is a type of solar prominence, Mashable said. Unlike solar flares, which release energy quickly before being absorbed back into the sun, a solar prominence eruption shoots large quantities of plasma into space, generally following an arc created by the strong gravitational forces that surround the star.

In a tweet on Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published a satellite picture of the eruption, citing it, "Now that's a huge explosion." The GOES-16 satellite, operated by NASA and NOAA, is most known for its observations of the Earth, but it also looks at the sun.

About CMEs

This type of solar activity is frequently accompanied by coronal mass ejections or CMEs, EarthSky said. CMEs are massive plasma bubbles that are occasionally directed at Earth. They have the ability to disrupt our planet's satellites and electrical infrastructures. The CME from this massive prominence, however, was not aimed towards Earth.

The sun's 11-year cycle of activity is now on the ascent. As a result, we're witnessing more sunspots, solar flares (solar storms), prominences, and enormous coronal mass ejections (CMEs).

So far this month (February 2022), there have been a lot of solar flares and CMEs. It's the sun's busiest we've seen in a long time. We should also expect higher solar activity as Solar Cycle 25 approaches its peak, which is projected in the mid-2020s.

In late January 2022, Science Times said a coronal mass ejection (CME) from an active sun brought down 40 newly deployed Starlink satellites.

Check out more news and information on Space in Science Times.