China’s recently launched Advanced Space-based Solar Observatory (ASO-S) beamed its first image back to Earth, a report reveals. The new image shows an M-Class flare erupting on the Sun.
China’s recently launched Advanced Space-based Solar Observatory (ASO-S) beamed its first image back to Earth, a report reveals. The new image shows an M-Class flare erupting on the Sun.
China’s ASO-S solar observatory launched to orbit aboard one of the China Aerospace and Technology Corporation’s (CASC’s) Long March-2C rockets on October 9. The country’s first dedicated solar observatory is positioned in a sun-synchronous orbit around Earth, flying at an altitude of approximately 430 miles (700 km).
ASO-S, nicknamed Kuafu-1, was designed to analyze solar flares and help better our understanding of the origin of these cosmic events.
China’s ASO-S could help us to better understand solar storms.
The Sun is currently around the peak of its repetitive roughly 11-year cycle, meaning we’re seeing an uptick in solar activity, resulting in the reporting of several massive solar flares in recent months and concerns that they may affect electronics equipment on Earth and in orbit.
The ESA’s Solar Orbiter and NASA’s Parker Solar Probe have been shedding new light on the mechanisms of the Sun for some time. Now, China’s ASO-S
Unlike ASO-S, orbiting Earth, ESA’s Solar Orbiter and NASA’s Parker Solar Probe both orbit our host star. Nevertheless, ASO-S’s high-altitude sun-synchronous orbit is high enough to avoid interference from the Earth’s atmosphere.
The observatory’s new Sun image was captured by its Hard X-ray Imager (HXI), and it was released by the Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
HXI’s image shows the eruption of a medium-class solar flare that took place on November 11, only a few weeks after the launch of ASO-S into orbit. A massive amount of electromagnetic radiation is seen flying out of the Sun’s atmosphere. A solar observatory is an observatory that specializes in monitoring the Sun. As such, they usually have one or more solar telescopes.
Originally published at Interesting Engineering