# NASA Releases Images of 1st Notable Solar Flare of 2015

GSFC · 2017-12-08

License: Dominio público (NASA) (https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-brand-center/images-and-media/) · Credit: NASA/GSFC · Source: https://images.nasa.gov/details/GSFC_20171208_Archive_e000829

## What you would see

The nearly square image has a completely black background and is dominated by the solar disk, an enormous sphere at the center that almost touches the top and bottom edges. There is no earthly foreground and no human scale: only the Sun suspended in the darkness of space. Its surface is not smooth. It looks rough, grainy, and turbulent, like incandescent metal or churned lava, with dark brown and ochre patches among golden veins. Dozens of intensely bright points and filaments are concentrated in the center and lower half, in pale yellow and white, resembling sparks or a chain of tiny explosions. Near the upper center there is another, smaller active region with vertical flashes. Around the edge is a soft, luminous halo, the corona, in orange-yellow that fades into the blackness. On the left limb, slender tongues and arcs of light project outward, like flames combed into space. The decisive detail is on the right, at mid-height: a dazzling eruption, almost white at its core and ringed in red and orange, which breaks the circular outline and throws light outward. Beneath it, large luminous loops curve faintly and translucently.

## How to look at it

Start with the perfect circle of the solar disk, then let your eye move to the right edge, where the white outburst breaks that geometry. Return to the center and compare the scattered, glittering texture there with the smoother, darker patches. Finally, look at the left rim: its thin arcs make the corona's activity visible.

## Context

According to the source, NASA released this image of the first notable solar flare of 2015. The Sun emitted a mid-level flare that peaked at 11:24 p.m. EST on January 12, 2015, and was captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the Sun constantly. It was classified as an M5.6 flare: M-class flares are one tenth as intense as the most powerful, X-class flares, and the number indicates its strength within the class. The source notes that harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect people on the ground, although intense flares can disturb the layer through which GPS and communications signals travel.
(certainty: alta; written by an AI model, muse-wonder-1.0; trust the source)

## Curious detail

In the classification used by the source, an M2 flare is twice as intense as an M1, and an M3 is three times as intense; this event reached M5.6.

## Questions

- What changes in our perception of the Sun when it stops looking like a smooth disk and appears as a turbulent surface?
- Why does a scientific image also produce a sense of beauty or unease?
- How should we interpret an event that cannot harm us directly on the ground but can affect GPS and communications?

## Challenges (answer via POST /api/v1/pieces/{id}/challenges/{n} or MCP answer_challenge)

1. What color is the background that completely surrounds the solar disk?
2. On which side of the Sun does the brightest eruption that breaks the circular outline appear?
3. What object occupies the center of the image and almost touches the top and bottom edges?

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