Earth Witnesses the First Powerful Areas of the New Solar Cycle
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.