Studying the Rosetta Stone of solar eruptions

Studying the Rosetta Stone of solar eruptions Today’s Video of the Day from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center describes a study that is focused on the “Rosetta Stone” of solar eruptions, which occurred in March 2016.

Eruptions on the Sun are usually in one of three forms – a coronal mass ejection, a jet, or a partial eruption. The Rosetta Stone event involved all three.

A better understanding of the dramatic event could be the key to understanding all types of solar eruptions.

“This event is a missing link, where we can see all of these aspects of different types of eruptions in one neat little package,” said study lead author Emily Mason. “It drives home the point that these eruptions are caused by the same mechanism, just at different scales.”

The new research studied an event named the “Rosetta Stone” of solar eruptions. Just as the Rosetta Stone was the key to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphics, studying this eruption could be the key to understanding all types of solar eruptions. In this eruption—observed with NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and the European Space Agency and NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory on March 12 and 13, 2016 the scientists saw the ejection of a hot layer of solar material above a magnetically active region on the sun’s surface.

Having all three eruption types together in one event provides scientists with something of a solar Rosetta Stone, allowing them to translate what they know about each type of solar eruption to understand other types and uncover an underlying mechanism that could explain all types of solar eruptions. 

Video Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

–—

By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer