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On March 29, 2014
an X-class flare burst off the sun and vaulted into history.
as the best observed flare of all time.
The flare was witnessed by four different NASA observatories and one ground-based observatory.
Each telescope captures a different aspect of the flare at a different
height off the sun's surface. Working together, NASA's
Heliophysics Fleet will help scientists better understand what sets off these
large explosions on the sun.
These images were taken using NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO.
It specializes in capturing images of the entire sun at once.
A close up shot captures some detail, but not at extremely high resolution.
IRIS watches a range of layers in the sun's
lower atmosphere. IRIS follows a well-planned schedule to
observe small areas on the sun in high resolution.
It was fortuitously pointed on this active region of the sun, in the hopes of catching a flare.
This is the first X-class flare seen by the spacecraft.
The RHESSI spacecraft can only see material at extreme temperatures.
on the sun. To RHESSI, a flare looks like three pockets of
heat in a triangle formation. There are two points on the bottom,
showing foot points, and a third at the top of the flare.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's and NASA's Hinode
shows a series of layers in the sun's atmosphere. The images from Hinode's
x-ray telescope show how material progresses from the lowest part of the
atmosphere, called the chromosphere, upward through the heart of the flare,
up to over three thousand miles above the surface.
These images were captured by the National Solar Observatory's
Dunn Solar Telescope in New Mexico.
The telescope can watch only a small area at once, but it provides much higher resolution each area.
The March 29th flare fortunately coincided with the best time of day
for viewing from the ground.
When combined, this comprehensive of one single flare will shed light on
many future discoveries.
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