On February 15, the Solar Orbitor, jointly developed by the European Space Agency and nasa, obtained the largest and most complete image of a solar eruption ever created. In the picture, there is not only the disk of the sun, but also the huge sun of millions of kilometers!
The prominence is a large structure in the solar atmosphere that sometimes appears in the form of arches or rings, like earrings, hence the name prominence. Now we know it's a plasma suspended above the sun's surface. The surface of the Sun forms locally intricate magnetic field lines along which plasma moves. Once the magnetic field lines have strong changes such as twisting, breaking, and reconnection, it will lead to the violent movement of the plasma. Nir is one of them. They are also often associated with coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which, if directed at Earth, can wreak havoc on our communications, space activities and daily lives.
A solar eclipse observed in the ultraviolet and microwave bands on September 10, 2017. The gray lines represent the magnetic field lines of the flare eruption model. (Source: NJIT-CSTR, B. Chen, S. Yu; NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory）
The latest event, which occurred on Feb. 15, was taken by the All-Day Surface Imager (FSI) of the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on the Solar Orbiter. The FSI was designed to observe the entire solar disk. The Solar Orbiter operates in an elliptical orbit around the Sun, with a perihelion distance of about 0.29 AU and a far-day distance of about 0.91 AU. The Solar Orbiter has a wide field of view, and even though the Sun is significantly larger in the center of the probe's field of view near perihelion on March 26, there will still be a lot of space around it.
The all-day surface imager also has a powerful resolution that captures stunning detail at a distance of 3.5 million kilometers (~5 solar radii) from the heliocentric. Judging from this event, the prominence is very large, and the coronal mass ejection range is very wide, almost beyond the FSI field of view, so it can be calculated that the altitude of the prominence of this time is at least 250 Earths. In fact, this also reflects that the heliotrope is side-to-side to the detector, because the more positive the angle, the smaller the projection area. And considering that the probe is currently approaching the sun-Earth connection, this means that this huge eruption comes from the side rear of the sun, where there are huge, more active sunspots. Look forward to waiting for it to turn around in a few days, we have a glimpse of the face!
Location of the Solar Orbitor (Source: Wikipedia)
At present, a number of solar probes are in operation, including NASA's Parker Solar Probe, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), China's Xihe, etc., all of which may detect this eruption, more or less. Even the "amateur" BepiColombo, which is orbiting Mercury, has monitored a significant increase in charged particle readings.
Suspected "meteor shower" from the crash of starlink satellites (Source: kevinizooropa)
Resources:
[1] Giant solar eruption seen by Solar Orbiter
(https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Solar_Orbiter/Giant_solar_eruption_seen_by_Solar_Orbiter)
[2] ESA - Solar Orbiter and SOHO’s view of a giant eruption – close up(https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2022/02/Solar_Orbiter_and_SOHO_s_view_of_a_giant_eruption_close_up)
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