A series of flares observed in January 2023. Click to watch a video of the events
Or click here for the youtube version.
A Week of Flares: January 2023
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With high solar activity a mere week into January, eyes and cameras were focused toward the Sun. Hinode XRT was no exception. Although the sensor was being cleaned during the large X-class flares during January 6th though the 7th, the instrument caputered numerous M-class flares. All of the flares were located on the East Limb of the Sun. Click here to view an intensitygram captured by the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) on January 15th with labeled active regions. (Source: spaceweatherlive.com and NASA SDO) Some of the active regions are not in the video due to low activity. Note that the intensitygram shows sunspots which is a different structure from the X-rays that XRT sees. From January 11th til the 15th, the East Limb delighted with several M-class flares captured by Hinode XRT. The captured flares were: on Jan 11 from 20:57-21:09: M5.7 flare from AR13184 on Jan 13 from 15:05-15:14: M3.9 flare from AR13184 on Jan 14 from 01:52-02:01: M4.6 flare from AR13191 on Jan 15 from 03:16-03:37: M6.3 flare from AR13191 on Jan 15 from 14:27-15:56: M4.8 from AR13190 At the time, the AR13190 sunspot was large but would develop large enough to be seen from Earth, using protective eye equiptment. It would look like the intensitygram since the flaring is in the X-ray spectrum and not visibile light. Back in orbit, the Al-poly filter shows the dazzlingly bright flares and delicate loop structures. The video shows each active region over its location on the grid at the time of activity. Please note that the scale on the videos and the scale of the grid are not the same. Look closely in each of the flares to see the entrancing arches. Keywords: Limb, Flare Filters: Al_Poly |
(Prepared by Rhiannon Fleming and Aki Takeda)
The XRT instrument team is comprised of SAO, NASA, JAXA, and NAOJ.
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