The 'hidden' solar flares from the far side of the sun: Nasa reveals stunning images of giant gamma ray bursts that throw out billion ton clouds of plasma

  • The ‘behind-the-limb’ solar flares come from the far side of the sun, and shouldn't be seen by the craft
  • But, the fast moving particles accelerated by eruptions travel around sun to produce gamma-ray glow
  • They are all associated with coronal mass ejections, with most recent moving at nearly 5 million mph

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NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has captured rare ‘behind-the-limb’ solar flares coming from the far side of the sun.

These high-energy gamma ray glows are all linked to fast coronal mass ejections, which launch billion-ton clouds of solar plasma into space.

These emissions should be blocked by the sun, as they come from the opposite side, and researchers say they traveled hundreds of thousands of miles in just minutes to be detected by the craft.

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The events occurred on October 11, 2013, January 6 and September 1, 2014, and all were associated with fast coronal mass ejections. The gamma rays detected by LAT are roughly 30 times more energetic than previous ‘hidden flare’ events

HIDDEN SOLAR FLARE 

‘Hidden’ solar flares are also known as behind-the-limb flares.

They are emitted by the far side of the sun, which the satellite shouldn’t be able to spot from its viewpoint.

But, the particles accelerated by the eruptions are fast moving and travel across the sun to produce a gamma-ray glow.

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Fermi’s Large Area Telescope has captured gamma rays with energies as high as 3 billion electron volts, according to NASA.

And, the agency’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observation spacecraft (STEREO) which were monitoring the far side of the sun at the time of the eruption, allowed for the first-ever direct imaging of these behind-the-limb gamma ray events.

The gamma rays detected by LAT are roughly 30 times more energetic than previous ‘hidden flare’ events.

‘Fermi is seeing gamma rays from the side of the sun we’re facing, but the emission is produced by streams of particles blasted out of solar flares on the far side of the sun,’ said Nicola Omodei, a researcher at Stanford University in California.

‘These particles must travel some 300,000 miles within about five minutes of the eruption to produce this light.’

These high-energy eruptions are all linked to fast coronal mass ejections, which launch billion-ton clouds of solar plasma into space. The most recent CME event, illustrated above, was moving at nearly 5 million miles an hour, according to NASA

The events occurred on October 11, 2013, January 6 and September 1, 2014, and all were associated with fast coronal mass ejections.

The most recent CME event was moving at nearly 5 million miles an hour, according to NASA.

‘Large magnetic field structures can connect the acceleration site with distant part of the solar surface,’ NASA explains.

‘Because charged particles must remain attached to magnetic field lines, the research team thinks particles accelerated at the CME traveled to the sun’s visible side along magnetic field lines connecting both locations.

‘As the particles impacted the surface, they generated gamma-ray emission through a variety of processes.

‘One prominent mechanism is thought to be proton collisions that result in a particle called pion, which quickly decays into gamma rays.’

Fermi has so far doubled the known number of these events since its 2008 launch, and has detected emissions from more than 40 solar flares.

And with the STEREO craft at its aid, they’ve increased their capabilities even further.

‘Observations by Fermi’s LAT continue to have a significant impact on the solar physics community in their own right,’ said co-author Melissa Pesce-Rollins, a researcher at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Pisa, Italy, ’but the addition of STEREO observations provides extremely valuable information of how they mesh with the big picture of solar activity.' 

 

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