An image of the sun on Feb. 15, 2011, using composite data of the sun's surface from SDO/HMI and the sun's corona from SDO/AIA. The cutout region shows (bottom) the five rotating sunspots of the active region (AR 11158), and (top) the bright release of light from the X-class solar flare.
CREDIT: D. Brown (UCLan), NASA/SDO, AIA, EVE & HMI science teams
The most powerful solar flare unleashed from the sun in nearly five years was triggered by interactions between dark regions on the solar surface that rotate and twist the sun's magnetic field, a new study shows.
Researchers at the University of Central Lancashire in England studied observations of the sun's flaring region taken over a five-day period by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). They found that the rotation of these dark regions, called sunspots, played a role in a massive solar flare that erupted from the sun in February.
"Sunspots are features where the magnetic field generated in the sun's interior pushes through the surface and into the atmosphere," said Daniel Brown, the study's lead researcher. "Twisting the sun's magnetic field is like twisting an elastic band. At first you store energy in the elastic, but if you twist too much the elastic band snaps, releasing the stored energy. Similarly, rotating sunspots store energy in the sun's atmospheric magnetic field. If they twist too much, the magnetic field breaks, releasing energy in a flash of light and heat which makes up the solar flare."
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