September 2017’s intense solar activity viewed from space

The activity originated from one fast-growing active region—an area of intense and complex magnetic fields—as it travelled across the Sun’s Earth-facing side in concert with the star’s normal rotation. As always, NASA and its partners had many instruments observing the Sun from both Earth and space, enabling scientists to study these events from multiple perspectives.

With multiple views of solar activity, scientists can better track the evolution and propagation of solar eruptions, with the goal of improving our understanding of space weather. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however—when intense enough—they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel. On the other hand, depending on the direction they’re traveling in, CMEs can spark powerful geomagnetic storms in Earth’s magnetic field.

To better understand the fundamental processes that drive these events, and ultimately improve space weather forecasts, many observatories watch the Sun around the clock in dozens of different wavelengths of light. Each can reveal unique structures and dynamics in the Sun’s surface and lower atmosphere, giving researchers an integrated picture of the conditions driving space weather.

Scientists also have their eyes on the Sun’s influence on Earth and even other planets. Effects from September’s solar activity were observed as Martian aurora and across the globe on Earth, in the form of events known as ground-level enhancements—showers of neutrons detected on the ground, produced when energetic particles accelerated by a solar eruption stream along Earth’s magnetic field lines and flood the atmosphere.

The imagery below shows the wide swath of views available to researchers as they use these recent space weather events to learn more and more about the star we live with.