Click for movie. Also available on YouTube.
A Not-So-Quiet Sun
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The sun is currently in the declining phase of its 11-year solar cycle. This means that the number of large solar flares are few and far between. However, that doesn't mean that there is a decline in the action on the sun! Hinode XRT recently took images of the full sun for 12 hours at a time over a period of several days. As you can see, there is a lot going on in the bright active regions, such as loop brightenings and the movement of material along the magnetic field lines. Even in quiet areas, such as the large dark region in the north, there are small jets that periodically emerge and disappear. While no major flares occurred during this time period, there were several smaller C-class flares. See if you can find these flares that occur during the movie. December 11
To learn more about the classification of solar flares, check out this link.
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(Prepared by Nicole Schanche)
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