Watch a plasma bubble burst around the Sun

Launched in December 2019, Solar Cycle 25 exceeded scientists’ expectations and proved to be much more active than anticipated at the time. creates more sunspots and flares and visibly increases solar activity.

Monitoring and forecasting solar cycles provides a rough estimate of the occurrence of various space weather events such as radio outages, geomagnetic storms, solar radiation storms, and others.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) has released an incredible time-lapse image showing extraordinary events occurring on the Sun’s surface. The captures were made by the Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) aboard NOAA’s GOES-16 satellite and took place in late October 2021.

Images taken by SUVI, tremendous power unleashed by the phenomenon. Unlike their predecessors, which captured only the first flash of light from the explosion, the new images show the subsequent expansion of the aftershock through the solar plasma.

The most visually striking event was an X1-class solar flare on October 28, 2021, this triggered a megabubble in the solar atmosphere.

Compared to the better-known NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, SUVI has a wider field of view, allowing it to capture extremely large structures like this one.

The balloon’s expansion pushed a coronal mass ejection (CME) out of the solar atmosphere. In that case, space meteorologists predicted it would hit Earth and trigger an intense geomagnetic storm..

However, this did not go as expected. CME mostly passed south of our planet, causing only a slight impact.

Interestingly, there are indications that Solar Cycle 25 may peak sooner than expected. Challenging conventional predictions by predicting a peak in late 2024 rather than mid-2025. This points to the possibility of even more extreme events in the future.

“The untimely progression of the solar cycle continues. Even though the sun is no more active than in previous generations, our society has changed. With our increasing reliance on electrical power, global telecommunications, satellite navigation and aviation, We are more sensitive than ever to the mood swings of the Sun.Dr. and scientist at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center.