M6.8 flare at Active Region 13559 - January 29, 2024

  • Released Thursday, February 15, 2024
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Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) operates in a geosynchronous orbit around Earth to obtain a continuous view of the Sun. The particular instrument in this visualization records imagery in the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum at wavelengths normally absorbed by Earth's atmosphere - so we need to observe them from space.

Active Region 13559 now carried by solar rotation to the upper right limb of the solar disk, launches a mid-range (M6.8 class) flare. For details of this event, see the Space Weather database entry. A large arcade of plasma loops forms after the event, more visible in the 171 angstrom and 304 angstrom filters. An eclipse of the Sun by Earth provides a nice 'curtain close' for the event.

For more information on the classification of solar flares, see Solar Flares: What Does It Take to Be X-Class? or X-Class: A Guide to Solar Flares. The point-spread function correction (PSF) has been applied to all this imagery.

The M 6.8 flare erupts from Active Region 13559 near the right limb of the image in this view from SDO/AIA 131 angstrom filter. The point-spread function correction (PSF) has been applied to all this imagery.

The M 6.8 flare erupts from Active Region 13559 near the right limb of the image in this view from SDO/AIA 171 angstrom filter. The point-spread function correction (PSF) has been applied to all this imagery.

The M 6.8 flare erupts from Active Region 13559 near the right limb of the image in this view from SDO/AIA 304 angstrom filter. The point-spread function correction (PSF) has been applied to all this imagery.




What is the PSF (Point Spread-Function)?

Many telescopes, especially reflecting telescopes such as the ones used on SDO (Wikipedia), have internal structures that support various optical components. These components can result in incoming light being scattered to other parts of the image. This can appear in the image as a faint haze, brightening dark areas and dimming bright areas. The point-spread function (Wikipedia) is a measure of how light that would normally be received by a single camera pixel, gets scattered onto other pixels. This is often seen as the "spikes" seen in images of bright stars. For SDO, it manifests as a double-X shape centered over a bright flare (see Sun Emits Third Solar Flare in Two Days). The effect of this scattered light can be computed, and removed, by a process called deconvolution (Wikipedia). This is often a very compute-intensive process which can be sped up by using a computers graphics-processing unit (GPU) for the computation.
Time slates for the multiple movies above, for custom compositing. Make sure to match the event and frame tag for the SDO frames you are using.

Time slates for the multiple movies above, for custom compositing. Make sure to match the event and frame tag for the SDO frames you are using.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Thursday, February 15, 2024.
This page was last updated on Monday, February 12, 2024 at 2:34 PM EST.

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