Project\'s diary

An astonishingly beautiful and rare solar phenomenon, registered by the TESIS telescopes, has been published on the NASA website in the “Image of the Week” section. The eastern limb of the Sun was lit up as if by fire for almost three days as around ten “blazing” protuberances stretched upwards simultaneously into the solar corona, reaching altitudes of over 100 thousand kilometers. The word “blazing” is not just a beautiful epithet. In this case it characterizes the phenomenon in the best way possible. In both appearance and character these protuberances bear a striking resemblance to tongues of flame bursting upwards from beneath the Sun’s surface.

The first powerful active areas of the new solar cycle have now come into view from Earth. This event was anticipated. Back on 7 May, two space observatories, STEREO (USA) and TESIS/Coronas-Photon (Russia), simultaneously registered a sharp rise in activity on the eastern edge of the solar disk. TESIS was then only able to see the peaks of bright magnetic loops stretching into the corona, but STEREO was lucky enough to observe much more – she succeeded in “glimpsing the future” and captured images of the new areas as they are visible today from our planet. This was possible thanks to the observatory’s unique orbit: two STEREO satellites, launched on 26 October, 2006, are now at a distance of over 100 million kilometres from Earth and allow us to see the Sun from the side, at an angle of 47 degrees.