Diary News Feed

This year’s most powerful solar flare was photographed by TESIS telescopes in the southern hemisphere of the Sun on July 5th, 2009. The flash lasted 11 minutes from 10:07 until 10:18 Moscow time, reaching its peak at 10:13 Moscow time. At its highest point, the intensity of solar X-rays reached level С2.7 on the 5-point GOES scale.

One of this year’s largest mass ejections from the Sun’s atmosphere was recorded last Sunday by TESIS telescopes aboard the CORONAS-PHOTON satellite (video - wmv 4.3 MB). The source of the ejection was the active area currently located on the far side of the Sun, which is, as yet, invisible from Earth. In total, approximately 10³-10⁶ million tons of ionized gas was released into interplanetary space.

Today this year’s largest group of sunspots will cross the Sun’s central meridian. The group, registered as number 1019 in the international NOAA catalogue, was literally formed before astronomers’ eyes several days ago on the visible side of the Sun. The first two spots appeared on the Sun’s surface on May 31st. The next day, the number of spots in the group reached five, and the day after, on June 2nd, it was possible to count thirteen sunspots on solar disk, which had been clear prior to this. All of the spots fitted into an area with a lateral dimension of less than 100 thousand kilometers.

Specialists from the TESIS Control Centre, at the FIAN Laboratory of Solar X-ray Astronomy, have succeeded in fixing a malfunction in one of the observatory’s central telescopes, which occurred in the second half of May. The first malfunctions in the operation of the Gershel x-ray telescope were logged on 10 May, 2009. The Gershel telescope was observing the corona and the transition layer of the Sun at a wavelength of 171 and 304 A.

The Russian TESIS/ CORONAS-PHOTON Solar Observatory, which has been working in orbit since January 30th, 2009, has photographed one of the most important events in the build up to the upcoming solar cycle – the formation of our star’s new southern belt of activity. The first magnetic fields of the new cycle in the southern hemisphere appeared on the Sun’s surface on May 23-24th. The emerged areas have a typical NS-configuration, i.e. they have fields of opposing polarities, positioned along the line of solar latitude. Predictably, fields with positive polarity are displaced to the West along the entire southern belt, and negative fields are displaced to the East. Therefore, polarity reversal of magnetic fields has occurred in the Sun’s southern hemisphere, and a new magnetic configuration has been formed, which will now remain intact for the whole future cycle.

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.