ISRO detailed the events of the week spanning May 8-15, highlighting the significant activity in the Active Region AR13664 on the Sun. This region, noted as one of the largest sunspots in recorded history, erupted with several powerful X-class and M-class solar flares.
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The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) released a series of images showcasing the dynamic activities of the Sun throughout the last month. These images were captured by the Solar UltraViolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT) and the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) aboard the Aditya-L1 spacecraft.
In an official statement, ISRO detailed the events of the week spanning May 8-15, highlighting the significant activity in the Active Region AR13664 on the Sun. This region, noted as one of the largest sunspots in recorded history, erupted with several powerful X-class and M-class solar flares.
These flares were associated with Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) that occurred between May 8 and 9, ultimately resulting in a major geomagnetic storm on May 11.
Aditya-L1 Mission:
SUIT and VELC instruments have captured the dynamic activities of the Sun 🌞 during May 2024.Several X-class and M-class flares, associated with coronal mass ejections, leading to significant geomagnetic storms were recorded.
📷✨ and details:… pic.twitter.com/Tt6AcKvTtB
— ISRO (@isro) June 10, 2024
Capturing Solar Events
The Solar X-ray Spectrometer (SoLEXS) and High Energy L1 Orbiting Solar Spectrometer (HEL1OS), two of Aditya-L1’s remote sensing payloads, documented these solar flares and CMEs between May 8-9.
Meanwhile, the other two in-situ payloads, the Advanced Solar Particle Experiment (ASPEX) and the Magnetometer (MAG), recorded the events during the May 10-11 period as they passed through the L1 point.
SUIT Observations
ISRO shared images taken by the SUIT payload on May 17, which revealed bright, active regions on the solar disk captured in the Mg II k line (NB3). These active regions are indicative of magnetically active areas on the Sun’s surface, which are potential sites for large solar flares due to magnetic field changes. As the Sun approaches its solar maximum, such active regions are becoming more prominent around the equatorial region.
In the Narrow Band 276 nm (NB2) observations, the images show sunspots in the active regions along with surrounding plages. The statement noted that the relative brightness of these sunspots varies in different narrow bands, reflecting the structural differences in the magnetic tubes at various atmospheric heights.
VELC Observations
The VELC instrument conducted observations in the emission line 5303 Angstrom. For capturing coronal activities, raster scans of the solar corona were carried out on May 14, with the AR 13664 location marked in the raster image. This image was created by assembling wavelength-averaged slit images as the Sun was scanned by the spectrograph’s slit.
ISRO explained that the raster scan took about 20 minutes and utilized four slits to cover different regions of the solar corona simultaneously. In the resulting image, the yellow “open” circle represents the edge of the solar photosphere, while the black “filled” circle indicates the extent of the occulting disk used by VELC to block the bright light of the solar photosphere, thereby allowing observation of the much fainter structures in the solar corona.
