Our Best Look Yet at a Solar Flare Reveals the Sun’s Wilder Side
It took astronomers a little over a year to analyze the sharpest-ever images of a solar flare. But they’re finally done, and the results are illuminating—literally and figuratively. Last year, NSF’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope captured a high-resolution image of a solar flare crossed with dark strands of coronal loops. Further analysis revealed that the solar flare was an X-class flare—the most powerful class—in a decay phase. The coronal loop strands averaged around 30 miles (48 kilometer