A team of scientists from the New Jersey Institute of Technology's (NJIT) Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) captured amazing high-resolution images of a recent solar flare - an explosion of magnetic energy that affects space weather - that includes bright flare ribbons and "coronal rain," which refers to the plasma that condenses after the flare, and reveals the visible surface of the sun.
The findings shed light on one of solar physics' biggest puzzles - how energy is moved from one region of the sun to another during and after a solar flare.
"We can now observe in very fine detail how energy is transported in solar flares, in this case from the corona where it has been stored to the lower chromosphere tens of thousands of miles below it, where most of the energy is finally converted into heat and radiated away," said Ju Jing, a research professor at NJIT and the lead author of the study.
The new observations reveal that despite the traditional view of electron beams as a major player in the transportation of flare energy, the spatial scale of energy transport is also a very important factor.
The images are described by distinguished NJIT physics professor Dale Gary as "the highest-resolution observations of this kind of activity we've had before."
"What is particularly interesting is that these bright areas of impact are so small in size that they have been present, but overlooked in previous observations with lower resolution," he added.
The images were captured by NJIT's New Solar Telescope (NST), a 1.6-meter-long device that witnessed the solar flare event on June 22, 2015.
The unique coronal rain images are just a few in a series of recent NST pictures that reveal unique insights into the dynamics of the sun's complex atmosphere and the massive eruptions that take place on its surface.
The NST possesses a high-resolution that gives scientists information on each phase of a solar flare, including the behavior of the bright flare ribbons present in its early stages and the unstable magnetic flux tubes that cause them in the first place.
"Ever since a solar flare was first detected by Carrington and Hodgson in 1859, this spectacular phenomenon of solar activity has been a subject of intense research and has served as a natural laboratory for understanding the physical processes of transient energy release throughout the universe," Ju said.
The team hopes that their new high-resolution images will reveal the effects of solar flares on Earth.
"Our measurements bridge the gap between models and observations, while also opening interesting avenues of future investigation," Ju said. "With large, ground-based telescopes, we will be able to measure, for example, these features on the Sun's surface down to their fundamental spatial scale? We look forward to further investigation coupled with theoretical modeling to fully understand what we have observed."
The findings were published in the April 13 issue of Scientific Reports