NASA's spacecraft assigned to observe the Sun captured unusual series of eruptions characterized by a number of fast puffs created by an ejection of a burst of solar material.
These eruptions started on January 17, 2013 and occurred over a period of three days. Nathalia Alzate, a solar scientist from the University of Aberystwyth in Wales, presented these observations.
The researchers sought to find out the causes of these puffs of energy by analyzing the high-resolution images captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) as well as the images from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO). The images were taken during the same time frame but they were presented in different wavelengths to see the changes in the sun's energy.
The sun's outermost layer is called corona and consisted of solar material called plasma. Plasma was magnetized material and has a temperature that could reach to million degrees. The European Space Agency and the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory of NASA documented the puffs coming from the corona's base. These puffs would later be observed to explode rapidly as it was ejected to outer space.
The interval of puffs was observed to be once every three hours. After 12 hours, a larger eruption was documented.
"Looking at the corona in extreme ultraviolet light we see the source of the puffs is a series of energetic jets and related flares. The jets are localized, catastrophic releases of energy that spew material out from the sun into space," said Alzate in a NASA news release.
Alzate also explained that the flares were caused by the variations of magnetic fields which also affected the release of energy. The massive amount of energy was forced to be ejected over a very short time and this produced the high-energy bursts.
The study was presented in this year's National Astronomy Meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society.
