Sun-thing in the way she moves Despite being 4.5 billion | Cosmos Astronomia® 🔭
Sun-thing in the way she moves
Despite being 4.5 billion years old, the Sun is still active, influencing space and planets in its orbit with solar flares, sunspots, and coronal mass ejections – known as space weather, which can interfere with satellites, GPS, and radio communications. NASA and other agencies worldwide monitor the Sun and the weather it creates 24/7 with spacecraft like the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO), which captured this image using its Advanced Imaging Assembly.
The SDO observes the Sun in different wavelengths of ultraviolet light. The teal assigned to this wavelength shows temperatures above 18 million °F (10 million °C) as well as cool plasmas around 720,000 °F (400,000 °C).
Our Sun goes through phases of high and low activity roughly every 11 years, culminating in solar maximums and minimums. As the Sun approaches the next solar maximum in June 2025, activities like solar flares increase. A recent strong solar flare occurred on March 28 at 10:33 p.m. ET (March 29 at 0233 UTC), classified as an X1.2 flare. X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength.
